


Hit 'Em Right Between The Eyes

by lieano



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Owainigo Week, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, it's a zombie au what do you want from me, oh also morgan is gender neutral :), on screen death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-09 20:18:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15275391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lieano/pseuds/lieano
Summary: The world had been at peace. Perhaps people didn’t acknowledge it. How could they with things like war and crime and poverty running rampant? But the truth of the matter was, the world had been in a state that allowed people like Inigo to spend a lazy afternoon at the supermarket picking out which ramen he wanted to eat for dinner. A great deal of people were allowed to mind their own business and lead easy lives with the people they loved. Peaceful. And then one lazy afternoon, without warning or pretense, the universe said,‘Well, enough of that.’





	1. this life is filled with hurt when happiness doesn’t work

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY OWAINIGO WEEKEND!!  
> Check out the blog here: https://owainigoweekend.tumblr.com/ This is a multi chapter fic. A new chapter will come out on the days of the ship weekend (so today, tomorrow, sunday and august 7th) and each one will focus on a prompt from that day. Today’s prompt that I used was Hurt & Comfort.  
> I had the most fun writing this fic, which is ironic because it is PAINFUL. In every way. If you know anything about zombie apocalypses, this should not surprise you. Think The Walking Dead here, both in terms of rules and general tone. ((You don’t have to have seen the walking dead to get what's happening, this isn’t a walking dead au, it was just the first one that came to mind.)) Things are going to get gross. Things are going to get violent. Things are going to get depressing. But at the end of the day, it’s a love story about these two guys who against literally all odds find each other at the end of the world. Just… proceed with caution. You have been warned. (But if you cry, please let me know in the comments, i live for that kind of thing :) )  
> Okay i’m going to shut up soon. Usually i’d say follow my twitter for updates but each chapter of this fic is going to come out on time. You can follow it anyway for more… me @lieano. Or you can follow my tumblr, also @lieano, for other things i’ve written. I’m also at some point going to put up a listen-along playlist for this fic, so look for that there if you’re into that. PLEASE check out the rest of Owainigo weekend!!! Leave a comment if you want to, but most importantly, enjoy yourself while reading!! Thank you~~~~

The world had been at peace. Perhaps people didn’t acknowledge it. How could they with things like war and crime and poverty running rampant? But the truth of the matter was, the world had been in a state that allowed people like Inigo to spend a lazy afternoon at the supermarket picking out which ramen he wanted to eat for dinner. A great deal of people were allowed to mind their own business and lead easy lives with the people they loved. Peaceful. And then one lazy afternoon, without warning or pretense, the universe said, _‘Well, enough of that.’_

A scream was not something that belonged in a supermarket. That’s why when one ripped through the completely ignorable elevator music coming over the speakers around the store, people turned to give their attention. Inigo, who considered himself a strong, capable, strapping young man at 23 years old, dropped his basket and ran to see if there was any way he could be of help. 

The scene was almost hard to believe. While he had been shopping in ignorance, a cashier had read something disturbing on their phone. Without causing a huge fuss, they had gathered some other people and boarded up the front doors. Now a small herd of people were pounding on them from the outside. 

It was startling of course, but at the time Inigo didn’t realize they were zombies. Sure, they were all injured in some way with exposed bones or ripped graying skin, and they were all drenched in thick dark red blood. Sure, they were a mass of haunting, cloudy eyes and gaping mouths drooling black liquid. They looked like a classic zombie hoard from a movie. But Inigo’s brain had trouble processing them as such. At the time he just thought _‘Are they sick? Do they need help?’_

The barrier between the sick and the healthy didn’t last. The hoard grew very quickly and were soon swarming through the aisles of the grocery store. The people who had worked hard to build the barrier were the first victims and Inigo watched in horror as they were torn alive right before his very eyes. Teeth piercing through skin like they were made of bread. The squelch of blood and flesh hitting the linoleum floors. Screaming. So much screaming. 

There was no time to think or process. There was only time to run. Those who did stand and stare and try to rationalize would not see another sunrise. Inigo was not one of those people. His flight response was well tuned. He turned on his heels and booked it, urging people who were running along with him as he fled. 

There was an exit in the back of the supermarket. People working the dairy and meat departments directed them. Some escaped, but only into a more dangerous world. The dead had risen and they wanted vengeance on the living. 

Inigo kept running until the stench of death was but a glimmer on the horizon. He would never completely escape it, not in this new horrific world. But there were some places that were marginally safer than others. Getting to them didn’t just take skill and physical ability. It required extreme luck and Inigo witnessed the gruesome deaths of so many unlucky people in those first few hours. He had made it out of town with a few survivors and together they found a car with gas to get further. They listened to the radio as long as there was radio. The news had a hard time sinking in. Zombies. Real zombies. Just like in the movies. There was no news of where to go or what to do before the radio cut off for good. The only parting advice from civilization as they knew it was _‘Stick together, help each other out, and if you see one… hit ‘em right between the eyes.’_

The first two days of the end of the world were all about learning, fighting and running. Learning about the disease. They only craved living human flesh, don’t let them bite you. Fighting back against the new apex predators in town. Aim for their heads, use anything you can find as a weapon, don’t let them bite you. Running from places they once called home. Don’t go to crowded ‘safe zones’, stay in small groups, travel light and quiet, _don’t let them bite you._

At the end of the first day, they were aimless. Or at least, the people Inigo had found himself battling his way out of town with were. He wasn’t. He had a goal, a specific place he needed to go. Three years ago he had left home and transferred to a college far away. He hadn’t moved back and he was so far from home. He needed to get back to Ylisse’s capital city Ylisstol and find his parents. 

The group warned him against it. If their small town was flowing with rivers of blood, there was no telling what horrors a huge metropolis would have in store for him. Inigo wouldn’t hear of it. His parents were the only people in the world that made his life worth living, even before the apocalypse. He had to find and protect them. He took just a couple of handguns and a motorcycle and left, wishing the strangers good luck. 

He did make it to Ylisstol and by then, four full days after the beginning of the end of the world (it would have taken just a half a day before), Inigo thought he had seen it all. He thought nothing could startle him as much as that first day in the supermarket. He had killed so many zombies on his own. He was running low on bullets, though, and feared that the reserves in the world were running dry at large. But he was close to his parent’s home, just inside city limits. 

They lived in a suburb. It was one of those places where all of the houses were built the same and people only had one tree in their front yard and lawns were groomed very well all the time as per their incredibly picky homeowners association. Inigo’s parents still lived in his boyhood home. Two stories and much too large for their lifestyle now. Usually their neighborhood was clean and calm save a kid learning to ride their bike here or a couple of teens shooting hoops in their driveway there. This wasn’t what Inigo found. What he found was a barren, eerily quiet street. It wasn’t clean. It was littered with overturned cars, scattered belongings, and large stained patches of blood. And bodies. 

Inigo had to assume they were bodies, at least. Most of the time when a zombie got a hold of a living person they would chew off an arm or pull out their intestines. They would have a nibble on the person right up until they stopped screaming. As soon as a person was dead, it was no longer of interest to the zombies. If they still had a means of movement, the corpse would rise soon and join the army that had killed it. But, on the rare occasion, a whole hoard of zombies managed to eat someone entirely before they completely died. What was left was usually a pile of flesh with ribs sticking out, or a hand with finger bones protruding just above the last joint. In the neighborhood, Inigo saw one or two lumps of what probably were once humans. He covered his mouth to stop from gagging and took cover next to a burned out shell of a car. 

An initial look around told him there were no zombies here. There were trails of blood that moved in a pointed direction toward the spiraling silver towers of Ylisstol. Inigo figured that once the zombies here had picked clean their own families, they had started the silent march toward downtown, which would have essentially been an all you can eat buffet at the start of it all. Inigo could only hope that some people were still here, living off of canned foods, waiting for the military or some other authority to come save them. He could only pray his parents were among them. That they hadn’t left when they needed to but had instead hid because they knew that this was where he would come to look for them. 

Unfortunately there was no time to search the whole neighborhood to make sure he was completely alone. He had to be extra quiet. Zombies could be accidentally sneaky if they thought they were alone. But there were lingering zombies in this neighborhood. There were lingering zombies everywhere. He just had to be careful. 

Inigo didn’t go through the front door. The street facing side of the house felt too exposed. But the backyard had a high fence. If he could get inside of it, he could use it for cover and go in through the back. He knew where the key was hidden under a ceramic gnome in his father’s garden so he could enter without breaking a window or doing anything otherwise too loud. 

It was almost too easy, getting inside. Inigo walked into the kitchen, which connected to the backdoor and looked around. Several of the cabinets were open and it didn’t look like any food was inside. Looters, he thought. Or his parents had taken the food with them and locked themselves in the basement. Hope prevailed once again. 

Inigo poked through the ground floor and found nothing. The TV was still there, that was a good sign. A couch was pushed up against the front door. An even better sign. He did a quick sweep of the three bedrooms upstairs too. Nothing in his room. It didn’t even look like it had been touched since he came home for winter break last year. His parents room was a little disheveled, like it had been left in a hurry and not re-entered since. Inigo didn’t see the spatter of blood on the comforter or the window sill. He didn’t check the guest bedroom. It was shut and he figured there was no chance someone was inside. Everything was so quiet. He went for the basement, his heart pounding. 

Inigo pressed against the basement door. He pushed his ear into the wood and tried to listen for signs of life. Of course, if they were down there, they probably wouldn’t be sitting on the steps. They would be in the finished living room, huddling together on a couch, eating beans from the can, waiting for their son. They were both probably armed. His dad was a vet and his mom worked for a secret government organization. They were both certified gun owners. Inigo didn’t want to alarm them and accidentally get shot. 

He knocked on the door lightly, hesitantly. He had checked. There were no zombies inside. If the walls of this house were thick enough to keep the cops from being called on more than one secret high school party, they were thick enough to conceal this too. His voice cracked as he said, “Mom? Dad? It’s Inigo. Are you down there?” 

An instant reply. A shuffle on the other side of the door. And a voice. Inigo recognized it right away as his dad. If he was saying words, they were hard to make out, but then Gregor had a thick accent from his far away homeland. He was probably beckoning Inigo inside. His heart leapt and he smiled as he took the door knob. He was right. His parents were alive! 

“Inigo!” came a high pitched voice from behind him. A voice that was too late. Inigo had opened the door just enough. Gregor’s enormous body came barreling through the crack. His eyes were clouded. His teeth were bared. There was a bite mark on his forearm that had turned black with infection. He saw Inigo, unhinged his jaw, and roared. 

Before Inigo could be swallowed whole by his father’s walking corpse, his mother, who had been taking a nap in the guest bedroom he had neglected to check, threw herself between them. She didn’t have a weapon on her and she was so small compared to her late husband. He descended on her like a mudslide. Inigo watched as in one bite he took nearly her whole hand off. 

Inigo screamed and withdrew his gun. He shot once, hit Gregor in the shoulder, momentarily took his attention off of Olivia, then shot again. That time he got a bullseye. Right between the eyes. Gregor’s zombie fell to the ground with a thud. 

The chaos wasn’t over, of course. Olivia’s hand was hanging off of her stump arm by one tendon. She slumped to her knees. Blood was oozing out of the wound like a pump filling a tub. Inigo’s felt like his heart was the tub. He was choking on the sight of it. 

“Mom,” he whimpered, falling to his knees as well to catch her. She leaned into his shoulder. He set the gun, one bullet left inside, beside him and held his mother to him. He buried his nose in her pink hair and wailed. “Mom, I’m so sorry.” 

“I knew you would come,” Olivia said weakly. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Inigo.” 

“We can fix it,” he sobbed. He took her forearm and studied the stump. He could barely see through his tears. There was no fixing it. It didn’t look like a bite, but it was one. Olivia was infected. The disease was crawling up her veins and he could see his black trajectory through her pale skin. It was already past her shoulder. She would be dead soon. Her skin was already turning grey and translucent like rice paper. 

Olivia shook her head and put her one good hand on his cheek to turn his gaze. He had to look into her eyes now. Her eyes that were the same color as stargazer lilies. Or, they had been, once. They were starting to grow cloudy now. “I stayed alive so that I could tell you something. You are so much braver than you think, and you’re strong. And I love you. I’m so proud of you. Your father too. We love you, Inigo.” 

“Mom,” Inigo choked on his sob. His mouth and throat were clogged with wetness. “Mommy. Don’t go.” 

When Olivia’s hand fell from his face, it left a soft bloody streak. Blood that was bright red, the color of a person who still had humanity to lose. “Kill me Inigo,” she said. “Don’t let me become one of them. Let me rest peacefully from the start. Please.” 

It was her dying wish, sealed in a single tear that rolled down the side of her face as she slumped in his arms. Her breath was shallow and growing more so by the second. Inigo, hands shaking, picked up his gun again. It was all he had. And between his screaming and the two bullets he had already fired off, the crack of thunder resounding across the block surely, he would be surrounded soon. 

In the last second of Olivia’s life, Inigo’s world slowed down. He saw with such clarity what he had to do. He was going to kill his mother, as was her wish, and then he was going to sit with her corpse until he was torn apart by the undead. It seemed a fitting end. He didn’t see any way out, but even if he did he had no reason. Here was his world. Two bodies laid out in front of him. Inigo didn’t have a life or a future anymore. He didn’t have a purpose. 

He put the gun between his mother’s eyes and just before she drew breath again, he squeezed the trigger. The bullet flew out of the back of her skull and lodged into the wall. The crack of it was more deafening than if he were standing in the worst part of a storm. 

The ending closed around him. Inigo could hear the pounding of fists on the front door, but he ignored them. There was just one couch. If they couldn’t figure that out, they could break in through a window. He had faith in the zombies. Faith that they would take his life in the most painful way possible. Having his limbs and organs forcibly ripped from his body seemed less tortuous than living in this world for another second. Unlike his mother, he didn’t even care if he turned into a zombie himself. He would haunt this world for all it had taken from him. He was set and certain. This was the moment Inigo’s undoing. 

The front door did eventually fly in. A hole busted through it as a zombie headbutted his way through the frosted glass decoration in the center. The light of the sun spilled in through the hole and Inigo shielded his eyes. He could only see the partially exposed skull of the zombie. It was blurry as it jerked around in what he thought were normal zombie movements. Until something followed the zombie inside. 

It was a human. A living human. Somehow the person had killed the zombie and used it as a battering ram to get into the house. The person threw the now completely lifeless corpse to the side and reached out a bloodied hand toward Inigo. Inigo hadn’t even fully processed what was happening as a voice boomed, “Your hero has arri- Oh my god… Oh my _god_. Inigo?!” 

Inigo blinked up into the sun. His eyes, still watery from the tears, had a hard time adjusting. And there was so much light from the door. It haloed around the stranger’s dark brown head of hair until his features became clear. And then Inigo’s gut lurched painfully. 

“Oh fuck,” he whispered. “Owain.” 

*** 

_~Inigo, 20 Years Old~_

The group of college freshman partied like the world was ending that night, when in fact they were still a few years out. They were the only people who appreciated electricity and technology, almost as if they _knew_. Every device that made sound or noise was plugged in. And they danced as if they would never have a reason to dance again. But none of this was strange, it was just how twenty year olds were. 

There wasn’t any special occasion for the party. It certainly wasn’t a going away party for Inigo. The only person who even knew that Inigo intended to go anyway was himself. He hadn’t told any of his friends yet. He probably wouldn't tell them. He wasn’t great at goodbyes. It would be easier to just vanish. Maybe no one would even notice he was gone. 

The way people were acting at the party certainly supported that theory. He had tried to pick up two girls that he had never seen, and one he knew from class that he had failed with before. They all shrugged him off, wouldn’t accept the red solo cups he offered them, pretended that someone was calling their name. But he tried anyway. He thought _’One last hurrah in Ylisse. This time maybe I’ll actually sleep with a girl.’_ No such luck. Maybe his next school, the one seven hours away, would be kinder to him. 

Inigo slumped through the party with his half drank cup of skittles vodka. He wasn’t drunk, just buzzed enough that he was starting to get a headache, and he was a little tired. Maybe it was time to call it a night. Maybe his last party in Ylisse would end on a whimper. Maybe he had to find peace in that. 

He rounded the corner to the front of the house. The entry way shared its space with what had temporarily been transformed into the dance floor. He paused before he could even reach for his coat under the pile haphazardly grown on the hall tree. The color green. It magnetized him, froze him in place. Green eyes that he hadn’t seen all night. But of course Owain was at this party. He was at every party, just like Inigo was. And, more importantly, this was Owain’s house. Of course he was here. 

Inigo suddenly had an idea. It wasn’t a novel idea. He’d had similar ones at every party their circle of friends had thrown over the past year. But he patted himself on the back for it anyway. With a smug grin, Inigo set down his red solo cup (Where? It didn’t matter, he had no intention of ever coming back for it.) and beckoned Owain to follow him. 

Like a puppy, Owain bounded after him, leaving his ‘sick moves’ on the dancefloor. He had them named. He was very proud of them. Inigo had seen them all at some point. It was irrelevant. 

What was relevant was how predictably reliable Owain was. Even when Inigo felt like he was the most unlovable person on the planet, Owain was there to reassure him otherwise. He was there as a reminder that there was at least one person who was fine with kissing him. 

It was very casual, this thing they had going on. Inigo was fine with the surface level attraction. His entire freshman year of college could be told through the stories of how many times he had struck out with girls at parties and drug Owain away instead. And Owain was more than willing, almost waiting in the shadows for the moment Inigo would call to him. Inigo never gave it much more thought than that. He didn’t need to consider Owain’s feelings. They were just making out a little. Experimenting. It was a college thing. A young man thing. Totally normal. 

Owain’s hand slipped into Inigo’s. It was a little sweaty, but it didn’t bother him. He grinned to himself as he led the way upstairs to Owain’s bedroom. No one would be in there. It would be the perfect, private setting for his one last hurrah in Ylisse. 

“I see that you need a hero to save you from your failing gallivants once again,” Owain said smugly. 

“God you are such a nerd,” Inigo said with a casual roll of his eyes. “Why do I even do with you this again?” 

“Because you know that in fact _you_ are the nerd. And my cool status elevates you.” 

“That is such crap and also I hate your stupid mouth.” Inigo tried not to smile. 

“No you don’t.” 

Inigo grabbed at Owain’s shirt collar and pulled him close. He backed up to Owain’s bed and let himself fall backwards when the backs of his knees hit the edge. By then, he was already kissing Owain, open mouthed, desperate. The taste of vodka and doritos passing between them and mixing in a horrible collegiate cocktail. Their teeth knocked together as Inigo tried to keep the kiss going even as he pulled Owain’s whole body on top of his. 

The banter was completely typical. It was their own special brand of foreplay. They had been ‘rivals’ since they were kids (Rivals for what? Inigo didn’t know. Owain probably did.) and when they found out that they could harness that hostile energy and direct it toward their more hormonal needs, they adapted. This was how it was now between Owain and Inigo. They argued, they made out, they went their separate ways. They had never done anything more than that. But it was a last hurrah and Inigo had plans. 

Inigo let his hands slide down Owain’s back, feeling the contours of his muscles as he moved. Owain worked out. It was strange, going through casual everyday life knowing that underneath all of those baggy graphic t-shirts hid a body that Inigo would kill for. He moved across the valleys, headed south until he could slip his hands into Owain’s back pockets. Then he squeezed. 

Owain gasped into his mouth and pulled away. His whole face was flushed. His eyes were unfocused. “Now that I have your attention,” Inigo said, his voice gravely with desire. “Do you want to do something… More? Tonight?” 

Owain’s eyes bulged. He braced his hands against the bed and lifted off of Inigo just an inch, to get a good look at him. “R-Really?” 

“Yeah,” Inigo said. He started to squirm, unable to meet Owain’s intense gaze. Any attempt he had made at being cool had already melted away. “If you want.” 

“Yes!” Owain said enthusiastically. Then, counter to what Inigo thought they were talking about, he jumped off the bed. Inigo sat up and raised an eyebrow as Owain shuffled around his room and then rushed for the door. 

“What are you-” 

“I just need to get a few things, sorry, stay right there! Don’t move! I will return!” 

With a dramatic and unnecessary flourish, Owain was gone. The door slammed behind him rather roughly. Inigo clicked his tongue and brought a knee up to rest his chin on. He couldn’t be too bothered. _He_ was the one to suggest they take their intimacy to the next level. Of course there were probably things they needed. And of course Owain hadn’t been ready for this. All they’d done up to this point was make out, some light over the clothes play. Inigo felt his nose burn as he imagined what _more_ would entail. 

As he waited, his gaze lazily drifted around Owain’s room. Eventually it came to rest on the bed side table, which Owain had quickly rifled through before abandoning it. He had left it open a crack. Inside was a large leather bound book with a fancy golden clasp on the front. Inigo raised an eyebrow. A journal? At a bedside table? Why that could only mean one thing. 

Without even a moment’s hesitation he slipped across the bed and reached for the journal. He glanced at the door and strained his hears for the sound of Owain coming back. All he could hear was the thud of the bass from the still ongoing party downstairs. He unclasped the journal and started to skim, quickly. 

Maybe if the stars had aligned differently, Inigo would have read a different entry. There were pages upon pages in the journal that weren’t even about personal matters. Owain sometimes wrote down story ideas or lists of cool attack names. (What was he attacking? No one knew. No one asked.) But Inigo flipped to the back of the journal, to the most recent entries, and he read about what had been bothering Owain most recently in his life. His eyes automatically latched on to his own name, and then his heart caught in his throat. 

“Shit,” Inigo breathed as he re-read the sentence and then read the entry it was built into several times for context. Was he imagining it? Was he dreaming? But no. No matter how many times he read it, it stayed there, bold and in ink. The words _‘I have fallen in love with Inigo’_. They wouldn’t go away. They were real. 

Inigo leapt off the bed and threw the book like it were on fire. All of his arousal and desire from before was gone. He was filled with new, more horrifying emotions. The only way he could interpret them was as dread. Owain and him messed around a lot, but love? That was too much. Inigo was just playing around. He’d never planned on getting attached. 

Suddenly his plans for the night seemed so cruel. Inigo was selfish, but he wasn’t _cruel_. He had to leave before things got anymore serious. 

And so it was that Inigo’s last hurrah in Ylisse consisted of him climbing out of a second story bedroom window via the tree that so conveniently grew near it and running off into the night before Owain could even know he had left. 

*** 

_~Inigo, 23 Years Old~_

It was like waking up from a dream when Inigo realized he was being dragged away from his childhood home by the wrist. Owain’s hand was clutching him so tightly he thought it could actually leave a bruise. His feet were unsteady beneath him, but he was, for all intents and purposes, moving. 

He had mentally blacked out, somewhere between his mother dying and his old fling showing up to save him. But his body had run on autopilot. Now that he was attentive, there was so much to process. The brightness of the sun high above him. Owain dragging him across the street of his old neighborhood. The blood splattered down both of their clothes. The moans. They were so close. He looked over his shoulder and regretted it immediately. 

There was a small hoard, maybe five zombies, all gnashing teeth and reaching hands, trying to grab the living boys. They were close. Too close. Inigo could smell the rot on their breath. 

“We’re almost there, Inigo,” Owain said through pants. He was pacing himself, breathing like a practiced runner. “Just a little further. Stay strong, friend.” 

Inigo immediately straightened himself out. He found his feet below him, reclaimed control of them, and put more effort into getting one foot in front of the other. He transformed from a clumsy suitcase of a person into a runner himself. Someone who’s flight response was going to keep him alive before he had time to wonder if that was truly what he wanted. 

Owain took him down the street and around the corner. It was a moment before Inigo realized where they were going. They were going to Owain’s childhood home. He lived in the same neighborhood, of course. It was how they had met. It was how Inigo had infiltrated the tight group of children his age at his school whose parents had all graduated from the same university together. (Ylisstol U, home of the shepherds!) Most of those kids had probably followed in their parents footsteps. It made sense that even after college graduation Owain was still here. 

Inigo tried to focus his thoughts on that. On his old world worries about leaving his home and friends behind. He tried to focus on anything except the imprinted memory of his mother’s dead eyes, a gaping bullet wound between them. 

Their last minute sprint had put some distance between them and the zombies. Not a lot, but Owain must have thought it was enough. He came to stop at the tree that grew against the side of his house and released Inigo’s wrist so that he could hold his sword in two hands. He’d had a sword this whole time? “You’ve climbed this tree before, right?” 

“What?” Inigo asked, still a little delirious. 

“Climb the tree, Inigo,” Owain said. “The window is open. The house is secure. I will hold the line until you are safe.” 

The undead howling, which had dissipated a little, started to rise again. Like a meter of how close death was. Inigo scrambled up the bark. It was a weird tree. There weren’t any low hanging branches, but with clever footwork a person with good upper arm strength could use the bark to their advantage. Up high the branches were sturdy. Sturdy enough to balance on while one climbed in through a bedroom window. 

Inigo had to admit, of course, that it was easier to climb down than up. But the sooner he climbed it, the sooner Owain could and they would both be safe. He just hoped the zombies hadn’t figured out the trick. 

When he reached the sturdy branches, Inigo looked down to check on Owain. It was only natural. He regretted it though. He had front row seats to the action just as the fastest zombie descended on Owain. His biceps flexed as he raised his sword. Skillfully, purposely, the blade entered the zombie’s throat and exited through the top of its head. Owain pulled his sword back in a squelch of blood and flesh. The zombie hadn’t fully fallen to the ground before he was decapitating the next one with a sideways swing. Inigo kept climbing. 

The window was open, but only a crack. Inigo had to balance on the end of the branch and lift. It was stuck. Great. 

“Inigo!” Owain called from below. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the zombies that were hurtling towards him, now in increasingly larger numbers. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but are you inside yet?” 

“The- Window- It’s-” Inigo grunted one last time and the window flew open. “Come up!” he shouted as he leapt inside. 

Inigo didn’t take time to look at his new surroundings. He braced himself on the windowsill. Owain sheathed his sword to his hip and then started climbing. He used only his upper arms. It was incredible to watch. The zombies were clawing at his feet in no time, but he kicked them away. He didn't even use the higher, more sturdy branches. Inigo leaned out the window and offered a hand, which Owain grabbed as soon as he was able, pulling himself up through the window like a professional parkour practitioner. 

Owain closed the window and then tugged Inigo down against the wall. Inigo went with a little resistance. He wanted to see if the zombies could climb the tree. His instincts told him it was _imperative_ to find out if the zombies could climb the tree. But Owain held him down. And then everything stilled. The only sound was their heavy breathing, the thud of zombies hitting the side of the house, and muffled moaning. 

“If we wait a minute, they will give up on this entrance and try to go through the front door. But I boobytrapped this house a long time ago. We can escape when they’re caught,” Owain said once he caught his breath. 

“And then what?” Inigo asked. His voice croaked as his words had to wade through so much stored up snot to escape. It hadn’t been that long ago, mere minutes in fact, since he had been sobbing uncontrollably over his parents’ corpses. He tried not to think about it. He couldn’t think about it. 

Owain grinned. It was such a dumb expression, Inigo thought. Owain’s grins had always been dumb, but this one in particular infuriated him. How dare someone smile in a world that no longer had Olivia in it. “We will make haste from here to the bunker.” 

“The bunker?” 

Then, it was almost as if Inigo had never left. Three years was nothing. Because here was Owain, just as he remembered, a nerd with a flair for theatrics, pressing fingertips to his forehead as if he were a comic book villain monologuing to an ensnared superhero. “Twelve brave souls, me included, have found a place of refuge in the epicenter of a dying world. The rest of humanity sleep walks for now but we will be the awakening that ushers in a new dawn!” 

“Twelve?” Inigo asked. “And you guys are… Where? Not in the city, right?” 

“I said epicenter,” Owain said as he deflated a little. “We’re smack in the center of downtown. It’s all people you know. There’s Lucina and Morgan, Cynthia, Brady, Severa-” 

Inigo cringed. “Oh god, not Severa.” Severa was someone Inigo had incessantly pursued during high school until she shot him down rather scathgingly in a public setting. It still stung. Of course his embarrassments from the old world would live on into the new one. 

“Severa is one of our best scouts,” Owain said, unperturbed. 

Inigo let out a long sigh, and with it felt how tensed he was. His shoulders slumped. The fight melted out of his joints. He was in pain all over, a dull ache pulsing through his muscles. He was so tired all of a sudden. 

“Scouts. Bunkers. Zombies,” he groaned as he hugged his knees to his chest. He closed his eyes to prevent the tears that he knew wanted to finish what they had begun. “Why?” 

Inigo couldn’t see Owain. He didn’t notice he had crawled closer until a hand rested heavily on his shoulder and Owain said, in a low, gentle voice, “Inigo, when I found you, was she-” 

Inigo smacked the hand aside and leaned away from Owain. His face contorted with rage. “Don’t touch me. Don’t try to comfort me. You are the _last_ person I was hoping to see today.” 

Owain visibly flinched. But there was a sad smile in his expression as he said, “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad I found you Inigo. I’m glad you’re alive.” 

Where was the bite? Where was the sarcasm? The familiar banter they used to have? Was it too much for ask for some old normalcy? Or had the universe ripped it all away and left him with a guy who wanted, above all else, for Inigo to understand that he was still wanted? Inigo’s eyes drifted across Owain’s bedroom to the nightstand. It was shut. If he went over there now, would he find that old journal? 

The moaning and scratching had died down outside and Owain poked his head over the windowsill. “The coast is clear. Stay close Inigo. I will get you to safety if its the last thing I do!” Dramatics. At least that was familiar. Inigo rolled his eyes and allowed himself to be helped up. 

They were able to climb down the tree without any trouble and started their trek toward the city. They ran in a crouch. Perhaps this would have been grating to their knees overtime, but the adrenaline of once again being out in the open where zombies were roaming free was enough to numb the pain. And besides, a little muscle burn meant they were still alive. The zombie apocalypse was surely the most effective exercise routine of the century. 

Owain had a sword, but Inigo was unarmed. He thought of his guns ( _Don’t think about what they’re laying next to._ ) empty and useless in his house. It was probably for the best. Again, Inigo wasn’t entirely convinced that he still wanted to be alive. A lack of weapons really would take some of the choice off of his shoulders. 

For an hour they traveled with no problems. The suburbs fell away like a serene diorama behind them. The city loomed ahead. It’s tall spires of civilization and contrasting utter silence. The smell of death stuck to the wind and rolled Inigo over the the closer they got. He covered his nose and winced in Owain’s direction. Was this normal? Owain nodded. He would have to get used to it then. 

Again with the parkour, Owain had Inigo ducking behind cars one minute and leaping across rooftops the next. He knew the city well, at least. He knew where there were alleyways untouched by the dead. He knew where to find fire escape ladders that could be lifted and dropped quietly. He knew which abandoned buildings were safe to run through. 

The weirdest thing was the zombies. They were everywhere. Owain and Inigo would stealthily pass by a small cluster, holding their breath the whole way. They leapt over zombie heads. Once in a while, Owain would sneak up on one that was in their way and kill it from behind, silently, his sword chopping through a decaying skull like it was butter. 

For someone like Inigo who had been traveling on a motorcycle down open roads, this was an all new world. It was horrifying. It was paralyzing. At one point, Owain and Inigo paused on a rooftop so that Owain could judge the trajectory of the sun in the sky and Inigo just looked at what was sprawled out before him. Ylisstol, the city that had once been his home, void of life, crawling with the dead as if they were an entire colony of ants on a hot summer day invading a home, but hadn’t found the food yet. He swallowed back the impulse to vomit. _Why?_

“We’re still a couple of hours from the bunker,” Owain informed him in a whisper. “We should find a place to stay before nightfall.” 

“Why?” Inigo asked, his eyes wide with fear. He couldn’t imagine sleeping in a place like this. “Wouldn’t it be safer to travel at night?” 

Owain raised an eyebrow. “No? Surely you know this by now. Our most dominant sense is sight. Theirs is sound. In the darkness, we are at a clear disadvantage if we can’t see them coming, but they can hear us going. How did you survive this long if you didn’t know that?” 

Inigo thought it was an unfair question. Clearly he and Owain had had different experiences with the apocalypse so far. He had been traveling in the open on a motorcycle that was loud and attracted zombies, but was much faster than them. The fact that he hadn’t summoned a hoard during his flight to Ylisse? Luck. He shook his head. “Is there anywhere safe nearby?” 

Owain gave him a brilliant smile. “As a matter of fact, I do know of one.” 

*** 

“Fuck supermarkets,” Inigo said out loud when they came to a stop in front of the doors. 

Owain, who’s shoulders had been rolled back in triumph, slumped. “You don’t like it?” 

Inigo glared at him. “I was in a supermarket when _this_ -” he gestured to the end of the world, which of course was all around them. “Happened.” 

“Sorry!” Owain said defensively. “I didn’t know…” 

Inigo shrugged. “Whatever. It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me today. You sure this place is secure?” 

“I was working here when it happened.” Inigo gave him a look. “I mean, not the exact instant. What a chance of fate would that be if we both had been in supermarkets miles apart from-” 

“Owain.” 

“I started working here a week before the outbreak. When the group settled down in the bunker, I suggested we come by to get some weapons and food because I had keys to get in. We’ve nearly picked it clean, of course, but I’ve been in and out of this building a few times since. There’s even a cot in the breakroom.” 

“Okay,” Inigo said. He gestured to the padlocked door. “Lead the way.” 

Owain had a small bag strug across his back. It was light and cinched close to his t-shirt. He pulled it around and rifled through it until he found a ring of keys. He slung the bag back into place and unlocked the padlock. A soft, unavoidable jingling of the keys and the chain links danced into the air and Inigo’s heart started to pound. His ears strained. If zombies were best at hearing and they came from humans, maybe he could train his hearing too. 

They got into the store without a problem. It was eerily quiet at the front. Cash registers lined up, dead and cold statues of a lost world. The aisles that stretched into the darkness were in complete disarray. Inventory was scattered and broke on the floors everywhere. Some of the shelves were bare. The one relief Inigo felt was that this wasn’t quite like the store he had been in at the start of the breakout. His had been mostly grocery. This was a much bigger store with other flushed out departments. The downside was the size. It was so big. And so dark. And mysterious. Mystery was deadly. 

Owain whispered, “I was just here yesterday, but it can’t hurt to double check. There are other entry points to the store. Here.” He bent down and picked up an item that had been dropped close to the front. A silver metal baseball bat. The tip was dusted with dried blood. “Stay close, but we can take an aisle each.” 

Inigo nodded and put himself back into fight mode. It had been a while. Most of his journey so far had been fleeing and sneaking. Not that there weren’t instances he hadn’t had to fight through. Of course there were. He just wasn’t used to having a close range weapon. The jitters raked through his body, uninvited and unwelcome. 

They didn’t stray far from each other. It would be foolish to. But Inigo couldn’t see Owain on the other side of the large stacks as he crept along, trying not to step on anything that would make noise under his shoe. He almost forgot there was another person in the building, or even the whole planet. 

He ended up in a toy aisle, but was completely unaware of being there until something pink caught his eye. Pink like cotton candy. Inigo looked down and his heart skipped a beat. 

It was just a doll. A nondescript ballerina doll. But she had long, pale limbs and soft pink hair that fell in tendrils. Inigo picked it up. The doll smiled at him, her eyes opening as she was tipped forward. Pink eyes. Lilies. Inigo’s own eyes welled with the tears until the image of the doll was blurry enough that it looked just like his mother to his weak heart. 

A heavy hand fell on his shoulder and Inigo dropped the doll and whirled to face his interrupter. His guard had been down for just a second and that was far too long. The bat raised. He almost took Owain’s head off. 

“Whoa,” Owain said, putting up his hands in surrender. One held his sword, so the original intent of the gesture was lost. “It’s just me.” 

“What are you doing,” Inigo hissed. “I told you not to touch me.” 

“I just… Wanted to let you know that there was someone else here. If you want to talk about it. I lost my parents too. I know it how it hurts.” 

His gaze became unfocused for a moment and Inigo saw sorrow there. He had no doubt that Owain had been through something terrible. There was not a human left alive who hadn’t. But his own trauma was special, because it was his. “You have no idea what I’ve been through. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Everyone processes things differently. Stop trying to sympathize with me. I don’t need to be comforted.” 

Inigo let the tension slither down his shoulders into his arms. He kept the bat raised and moved onto a different aisle. Owain didn’t say anything after him. Had the apocalypse made him docile? Whatever. It wasn’t any of Inigo’s concern. 

It was then that Inigo realized he needed a plan. Whether he was going to live or die, did he want to be with Owain much longer? Did he really want to go back to this foretold bunker where a bunch of old pals from high school were holed up? Did he not want to haunt Ylisse anymore and take out his undead revenge on the planet that had so cruelly taken his parents from him? If he was going to die, he had to do it quickly. Before Owain could get him somewhere safe. Before Owain found out what was up and stopped him. 

He was so deep in his thoughts, he almost didn’t see the little zombie. She was little, that was part of the problem. She only came up to his waist. And she was quiet too, a trait most zombies didn’t display. It wasn’t until she let out a little growl just two feet away from Inigo did he even see her. 

He yelped and swung his bat. He didn’t even have time to process it. He didn’t recognize her as a child, he only saw the blood soaked dress, bone sticking out of her knee, and her teeth stained black from her other victims. Her head was the tee-ball, her neck was the tee, and Inigo was the star player. Homerun. 

“Shit,” he said when it was over and the rest of the girl fell to the ground with a thud. Her head gnashed at him from a few feet away, still alive but now completely immobile. Morbidity took over and Inigo facetiously asked, “Where are your parents?” 

He certainly wasn’t expecting an answer to his question. But a new groan echoed from a few aisles down and was immediately followed by a shout that sounded distinctively like Owain. Inigo left the angry zombie head behind and ran in the direction he was needed. 

It was time to graduate to the big leagues, because mom was taller than her daughter and coming in hot. A fastball that would bite him if given the chance. Inigo swung high, aiming for her skull. He had to bash in her brains this time. He had to neutralize her before she could strike him out. 

With a reverberating clang, the metal connected with delicate bone and crushed it. The shock of the hit vibrated up his arm, but he also felt the soft give of the zombie’s brain. She went down like a falling tree and Inigo turned to find Owain. 

Owain was pinned on the ground by what must have been the dad. He was a large zombie, with a protruding beer belly. He was wearing a cameo button down, thought the thing was so stained with blood now it looked more like a christmas sweater. His mouth was unhinged, it was so wide, blood and spit and black goo dripping between his teeth. Owain had lost his sword somehow, but it was on the other end of the aisle. He held the zombie up by its neck, desperately keeping its teeth away. Inigo had to think quickly. The bat would be dangerous for Owain, with his hands and own face so dangerously close to his target. He needed something much subtler. 

The first blessing of the universe came in the form of Inigo realizing what aisle they were in. Weapons. Hunting gear. Things that should not have been sold to the public for so cheap but were anyway. Of course there were no guns or bullets. Those things had been taken out of the shattered glass case long ago. But there was a crossbow, right near Inigo’s foot. He picked it up and checked. One bolt. He took a deep breath. 

One bolt to kill the zombie and save Owain. Or, he could catch the zombie’s attention and let it kill him instead. He looked at the zombie. Cloudy eyes, just like his mother. Just like his if he let this happen. 

And then he looked at Owain. Green eyes, crisp as the grass on a manicured lawn (Sans blood of the innocents of course.) on a sunny summer day. Hair that was dark brown like wood. Big arms, tensed with his fighter’s spirit. Owain didn’t deserve the risk of Inigo letting himself die. He had fought so hard. He had done so well to keep Inigo alive, without even asking if that’s what he wanted. He was a nerd, but he was pure and good. He deserved a win. 

Inigo let out a deep breath and leveled the crossbow at the zombie. He whistled and the creature looked at him. He aimed for that most delicate of spots, right between the eyes, and pulled the trigger. The bolt was silent and true and the zombie slumped over onto its side dutifully. 

Inigo dropped the now useless crossbow and then dropped to his knees. He helped Owain sit up and then routinely started check him all over. Was he bitten? Was he bleeding? Was he going to turn into one? 

When his searching slowed down long enough to see that Owain was grinning on him, Inigo looked away bashfully. “Shut up,” he said before jumping to his feet and offering a hand to help Owain up as well. 

They finished checking the store and then made their way to the breakroom. The door locked, which was good. If any other stray zombies were missed or found a way to wander in, at least Inigo and Owain wouldn’t be killed in their sleep. 

Owain lit up the space with some candles that were already set up. There was, indeed, a cot. And it was relatively clean. There wasn’t even any blood on the walls. Inigo’s expression lit up as he looked around. 

“A bed,” he moaned. “A real bed. I can’t believe it. I might actually be able to sleep in here.” 

Owain smirked and took a seat on the uncomfortable looking loveseat positioned right next to the cot. “Rest well, my friend. You will need all of your strength for when we leave in the morning. We want to get back to the bunker early. They’re already going to be worrying that I’m not back yet.” 

Inigo sat on the edge of the cot and tested its buoyancy. It bounced. It wasn’t the least comfortable thing in the world. It was certainly more comfortable than a barn or the hard dirt ground. “Do you guys normally do this? Send one guy out all on his own to look for survivors?” 

“Uh, no,” Owain said, suddenly sheepish. “We scout in groups of four, actually. I was separated from my group. They were close to the bunker, but I was pushed to the city limits. That’s how I ended up in the neighborhood. In hindsight, though, it was not the worst thing that happened.” Owain rolled his shoulders back and stretched an arm out dramatically in front of himself as he said, “Lady Fate’s divine intervention at hand, no doubt! For I would not have found you if I weren’t braving the wilderness on my own.” 

Inigo picked up the one pillow on his cot and leaned over to whack Owain up the side of his head. Then he placed it back under his own cheek and curled up into a little ball. “I’m going to sleep now. Try not to keep me awake with all your… Owainness.” 

Owain didn’t respond verbally, but he did salute. As Inigo rolled his eyes he also rolled his body so that he would be facing the wall. It was so counterintuitive to not see the door, especially in the current world climate, but he forced himself to. He couldn’t think about Owain right now. His head and heart were too heavy with other things. 

The blanket on the cot was soft and the pillow was supportive. For a moment Inigo thought he could nod of quickly. But he didn’t. His mind started to roll the reel of a bad movie. It replayed the events of the day vividly as if he hadn’t been haunted by them for the past several hours. He couldn’t shake them. He squeezed his eyes tighter and saw only pink and red. He rolled over and put the pillow on top of his head. Nothing. He couldn’t sleep. Tears started to flow freely down his cheeks. 

Through all of the restlessness, Owain didn’t make a sound. Inigo sat up on the cot and looked at him. His head lolled back, his eyes were shut, arms crossed. Inigo was silently but persistently crying. It wasn’t going to stop and he couldn’t get comfortable by himself. 

A strange thought struck him. Much like when he was in college and would seek Owain out for comfort after his rejections, he considered it now too. Maybe a warm body was all he needed. Something to remind him that there was still blood pumping on the planet. But after pushing Owain away all day? 

Inigo thought of his mother, but this time he didn’t think of her cloudy eyes or the bullet wound in the middle of her head. He thought of her heart beat. Warm. Comforting. He needed it. Because if he wasn't comforted right then he might really run out the door and try to get himself killed. And, he realized suddenly, he didn't want that. Not as long as there was still one person alive who wanted him around. One person who has fought all day to see him to safety. 

Inigo slipped off the cot and took the two steps to the couch. Owain could have curled up on it, tried to fit his large body on the two cushions. But he hadn’t. He had sat on one side. Almost as if he knew Inigo would be here, curling into him. He did. Inigo made himself as small as possible and he nudged into Owain’s elbow. 

If Owain had actually been asleep, he made the transition to consciousness seamlessly. He opened his arms and draped one across Inigo’s shoulders. Inigo curled into his chest and continued to cry. And eventually, he fell asleep with Owain rubbing circles on his back and not saying anything at all. 

*** 

The next morning, Inigo found out that they were remarkably close to the bunker. Infuriatingly close, in fact. But Owain just shrugged and said plainly that it was wise of them not to travel in the dark. Inigo didn’t point out how he had almost died in that supermarket. He closed his mouth and watched as Owain undid the hatch. 

The bunker was exactly that. Inigo wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. Perhaps he thought the term ‘bunker’ was just a codename for a safe house. But there really was an underground end of the world bunker in the very center of the city. It was located inside of a harmless government building. Not a place that would have been a target for looting in the initial panic. And, of course, a place that someone like Lucina, Morgan, or Owain would know about. Their aunt had been the prime minister of Ylisse. All of the people Owain had mentioned being in the bunker had parents that worked in the government, alongside Olivia. Of course they had come here. Inigo probably would have too if he hadn’t left Ylisstol three years ago. 

They climbed down a step ladder into the darkness. It was so dark, Inigo started to get claustrophobic. He couldn’t tell how close the walls were or how far down the landing was. When they did reach the bottom and Owain clicked on a flashlight he felt a little relief. Then they were at another giant metal door. Inigo sucked in a breath. He didn’t know why he was so nervous. 

The door swung open and Owain was immediately rushed by his companions. Clearly they had been worried about him. Morgan started to cry. They had been on that mission with Owain, they had watched him get seperated. No one even noticed Inigo at first, who hung behind Owain, fiddling his hands. Would they be happy to see him? Would they all recognize him? 

“Well I’ll be damned,” came the distinctly recognizable voice of Brady. “Inigo, ya son of a gun. Ya finally made it.” 

Now everyone’s attention was on Inigo. His face burned with embarrassment. He was suddenly very aware of how long it had been since he last bathed. There were girls. He felt so shy, like he was a kid again. 

Lucina put a hand on Owain’s shoulder and said, “Good job,” which made Owain beam like a fool. 

Cynthia winked at Owain and said, in what she must have thought was a quiet, sneaky tone, “Sooo, you excited?” 

“Yes, since Inigo is now here, perhaps we will stop hearing about him so much?” Laurent, the snarky bastard. 

Owain’s face turned red instantly and Inigo squinted suspiciously. Did Owain talk about him? Even after all these years? Even after the end of the world? 

“Owain,” Inigo said, fighting through the small crowd to grab at Owain’s wrist. “Can we talk? Alone?” 

“It’s a… Small bunker,” Owain said sheepishly. He was still red. 

“Well let’s try anyway,” Inigo said and he dragged Owain in a direction that was away from the other eleven occupants of the small space. 

The bunker was, indeed, very small. There were a few alcoves with cots and blankets and one that looked like it was allocated as a kitchen, though most of the cooking had to be over a crude camping oven. There was a small pantry that didn’t have a door, lined with canned foods that had faraway expiration dates and jugs of water. Another pantry was lined ominously with weapons. Inigo looked at his options, tried to ignore the fact that the other survivors were watching every move they made and pulled Owain around a corner so that at least they couldn’t be seen. 

“Look,” he said, trying to be as neutral in his tone as possible. He didn’t want to be mean. But this was a conversation three years overdue. It was a conversation he had literally run away from. “Just because you saved me doesn’t mean we’re… We can’t… You know… We can’t pick up where we left off.” 

Owain deflated a little. His blush evaporated like a rose wilting. Inigo’s heart clenched. He was usually the dumpee, not the dumper. He knew how it felt. “I know,” Owain said simply. 

“I’m sorry,” Inigo said. He couldn’t meet Owain’s gaze. He felt like he needed an excuse. Maybe because the girls of his past never gave him one? They never gave him a reason or closure, they just punched him the arm and told him to buzz off. He didn’t want to do that to Owain. “It’s just… Uh, I think we might have to help repopulate the world when this is over? Right?” 

Owain, raised his head and an eyebrow. Before he could say anything a shrill cackle invaded the space. Inigo tilted his head around the corner and locked eyes with Severa. She wiped a nonexistent tear from the corner of her eye. Unlike everyone else, she wasn’t even pretending as if she wasn’t eavesdropping. 

“That’s hysterical, Inigo,” she said. “That you think anyone here would want to repopulate with _you_.” 

And then it was like a switch flipped inside Inigo. That one jab at his pride burned away the past twenty four hours. He wasn’t worried about Owain. He wasn’t consumed with grief for his mother. He was, once again, a young man, fresh out of college and surrounded by old friends. Friends he could joke with and talk to. Friends who knew what he had been through and wouldn’t treat him any different for it. 

He smiled at Owain and, despite himself, Owain smiled back. And it was so small, so simple, but Inigo thought to himself that maybe the end of the world was worth living through after all.


	2. say your goodbyes if you have someone you can say goodbye to

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OWAINIGO WEEKDAY DAY 2, DAY 1 WAS GREAT, I'M SO EXCITED, HERE WE GO WITH MORE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION  
> The prompt I picked for today was goodbye and can I just say, the fact that I got to use a line from How Far We've Come by Matchbox 20 as a chapter title makes me so happy because I've always considered this song to be the ULTIMATE zombie apocalypse song. Seriously. I made a Dawn of the Dead music video to it once lmao.
> 
> Anyway I edited this hungover so I hope it turned out okay. Enjoy~~ Don't forget to check out the blog https://owainigoweekend.tumblr.com/ and also leave a comment if you like this~ See you tomorrow~~

Lucina had a plan. It had already been in action long before Inigo got to the bunker, so all he had to do is slide into his role. He is so thankful for the job, for the distraction, and he knew everyone else was too. The bunker was a blessing in more ways than one.

It took a few hours to catch Inigo up to speed. There were an alarming amount of things the Ylissean government had known about the zombie virus before it even spread. First of all, it wasn’t an accident and it didn’t have unknown origins. Ylisse had received threats of biowarfare in the past. The public hadn't been made aware of the threats for fear of mass hysteria, but other actions had been taken in place of evacuation. 

“I wish they had evacuated,” Lucina said solemnly, interrupting her own straight faced explanation of the facts. She looked down at the map that was pinned to the table she was bent over. Her eyes glistened as she continued, “Maybe they would still be… But they didn’t evacuate. They thought they could squash the threats before it became a reality. They were working on something.” 

“Hark, there is light in the darkness! Hope in a time of hopelessness emerges!” Owain exclaimed, taking over where his cousin’s voice was running thin. “And what shall we call these gifts that will resurrect humanity from the ashes like a glorious phoenix? NAGA’s Blessings!” 

Inigo raised an eyebrow. Naga was a legend, a god of the old world. He had learned about it in a folklore class in college. It was an elective. He just needed the credit. Surely this was another hairbrained invention of Owain’s. He was hard to take seriously. Inigo turned to Lucina. “Naga?” 

“NAGA, Neuro Aggression Generic Antidotes, was a secret project my father and a few of his colleagues were working on. They made antidotes to fight different possibilities of what the biological weapon would look like. One, Falchion, was designed to fight a virus exactly like the one we ended up with. I think your mother was involved, Inigo. You should be proud. They gave us a chance to save the world.” 

“Antidotes?” The breath almost left Inigo entirely. “Cures? They made cures? We can turn zombies back into people?” 

Lucina shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. The look of death on a zombie is not an act. The virus really does kill its host before it takes over the body to spread itself. Falchion can fight the part of the virus that makes them walk around, but there is no cure for death. Though, it can save someone in the early stages, if it's administered right after they’re bitten. Before they die.” 

Inigo looked down at the map in front of him again. It was blueprint of the city. Several buildings were circled and a few were crossed out. “You don’t know exactly where the antidotes are, do you?” 

“Not exactly,” Lucina laced her words into a sigh. “But we’ll search until we find them or we’ll die trying. It’s what our parents would do.” 

“And then how will you distribute it when it's found? The city alone is pretty big, and that’s before you consider that the virus is spread throughout the whole country. Maybe even further. Surely you're not planning on running up to each and every zombie and asking them to hold still while you stick them with a needle?” 

“Gerome is in possession of his mother’s plane. It’s in a secure location and we’ve been storing up gas. When we find the cure, we can release it from the air. It will take time, of course.” 

“Okay, sure, so that takes care of zombies on the streets, what about zombies inside?” 

“Hopefully clearing out the streets tips the population of humans vs zombies a little more in our favor. We will have more mobility and be able to find other survivors. With bigger numbers, going inside shouldn’t be as big of a risk. Also, if every survivor is equipped with several doses of Falchion the fear of being bitten will diminish.” 

“Okay.” Inigo rubbed his eyes. His mind was going a mile a minute, but his body was sagging. “What about-” 

“Inigo,” Lucina said sternly. Owain was eyeing him over her shoulder, but Lucina was the one talking. “I know you’re concerned. And I have to admit, we haven't planned for everything yet. I’m sure if you keep working at it, you’ll find a question that stumps me. Right now the only thing we need to focus on is finding the cure and to do that, you need your strength. You need to go rest. Digest what I told you and if you have more questions later, you can ask then.” 

With a sigh and an immediate yawn, Inigo said, “Okay… I’ll go take a nap…” 

Lucina smiled. It was so pretty. Inigo wanted to see her smile more often, so he vowed then and there to put all of his effort into this mission. “Thank you Inigo. Welcome to the team.” 

Even as he walked away Inigo could feel Owain’s eyes burning into his back. He shoved his hands into his pockets and tried not to make it obvious that he noticed. He didn’t even turn when Owain excused himself from the conference alcove and followed. He went to the cots. Fortunately, they were empty. Mostly empty. There was one lump of a person and with one long brown pigtail falling out of the top of the thin sheet, Inigo knew it was Severa. Her breathing was even. Maybe she was asleep. He hoped she was. Because he was about to do something with Owain that he didn’t want to explain or apologize for. 

He felt two hands fall on his shoulders and he turned to face Owain. He smiled sadly and took a seat on the floor next to a cot. Owain joined him. Their shoulder’s knocked together and Inigo let it happen. 

“If you didn’t understand something I can explain it again in simpler terms,” Owain said. His voice was barely above a whisper, right next to Inigo’s ear. It made him shiver a little but in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. He nestled in closer to Owain. 

“Simpler terms? You? Don’t be ridiculous, Owain. Anyway, I got it. I’m just… processing. A cure? It seems…” 

“Cool?” Owain finished. He rolled his shoulders back and beamed. “At the last second, we are going to swoop in and save humanity, as was our parent’s mission before us, a task passed down through-” 

Inigo cut Owain off by tilting his forehead into Owain’s shoulder. He took a deep breath. Tears were iminent. Owain’s arm was immediately around him, pulling him closer. “I’m sorry, did I say something upsetting?” 

“If there was a warning… If she knew…” Inigo’s mother worked for the government. She worked on NAGA’s blessings. She knew about the threats. Why had she stayed? 

Owain’s hand tangled into Inigo’s hair. He made himself more comfortable, twisting and lifting his body so that he was sitting partially in Owain’s lap sideways. And then they just sat like that for a long time and Owain was quiet for Inigo. He didn’t cry for too long. He was getting better at this whole embracing grief thing. And even better at letting Owain comfort him. 

He must have dozed off, because when Inigo woke up, he wasn’t in Owain’s arms anymore. He was laying on a cot properly tucked in. He imagined Owain lifting him and placing him in the cot and his face burned. Hopefully no one had seen it. Hopefully Severa was still- 

Inigo’s blood froze. He looked up and across the alcove at the other cot where she had been sleeping and, sure enough, Severa was still there. Only she wasn’t asleep anymore. She was sitting on the edge of her cot, glaring at him. 

“Hey Inigo,” she said in a dry tone. “What the hell?” 

He sputtered. “What the hell with what?” he asked in a cracked, sleepy voice. 

“That act with Owain. I saw the whole thing. Listen, buddy, just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean you go back to dragging him around on a leash. It’s not right.” 

Inigo didn’t have a response for the accusation. His mouth closed into a thin line and he racked his brain for something. Anything. Even a nice _‘it isn’t like that’_ would have sufficed. But he couldn’t bring himself to it. 

“I put up with watching this pathetic act freshman year. And don’t think you flew under the radar then either, neither of you are incredibly subtle.” Inigo’s face burned. “Owain likes you. Like, he _like_ likes you.” 

“You don’t know what you saw,” Inigo finally managed. “It was all… Casual.” 

“HA!” Severa shouted. Inigo worried for a moment that she was going to drag more people around the bunker into their conversation, but they remained blessedly left alone. “Even when he knew that there was a high possibility you were already _dead_ somewhere out there, he wouldn’t stop talking you. You had been gone for years and he had a plan to leave one day to find and rescue you. This whole situation that is happening right now is like his biggest fantasy. And you are leading him on through it. You can’t say ‘We can’t be together anymore’ and then keep cuddling with the guy every time you feel a little insecure.” 

“I’m just having a hard time. He’s… Helping me process it all.” 

“Was what happened freshman year a ‘hard time’ too?” 

“Yes!” Inigo exclaimed. “Nothing’s changed. Except we’re not doing… That anymore. It’s fine. He’s fine. We’re fine.” 

“You know something? You’re the absolute worst.” Inigo sputtered again, but Severa just barreled on with her roast. “If you, me, and Owain were sucked into a wormhole tomorrow and ended up in a world that wasn’t overrun with zombies, but it was just the three of us, I would literally rather kill myself that watch this go on for an eternity.” 

Inigo crossed his arms and pouted. “Whatever. It’s not that bad. And I’d be a pleasure to spend an eternity with.” 

“Yeah, I bet Owain thinks so.” Before Inigo could respond she stood up and moved to the edge of the alcove, tossing a casual, “Good fucking luck,” behind her before leaving him to stew. 

*** 

“You just got here. You were out there all this time. You can be honest if you’re not ready to go out yet. Trust me, Inigo. You don’t have to do this.” 

Lucina was all but rambling behind Inigo as he strapped a belt around his waist. He wasn’t experienced with using sharp, close range weapons, but the apocalypse was as good a time as any to learn. Guns were so loud, they were a liability. As such, they were only authorized to certain people who knew how and when to use them. Inigo didn’t feel like he could pull off a sword quite like Owain, but he also didn’t feel comfortable with small weapons like throwing knifes. He had grabbed a couple of machetes. They were like the baseball bat but sharper. 

He slipped one machete into the back of his belt and turned to give Lucina one of his award winning smiles. “It’s fine. I want to pull my weight around here. Besides, I had a good zombie killing day yesterday, I don’t want to lose that edge and get rusty.” 

Lucina sighed. “Fine. But for your first mission I’m sending you out with Owain.” 

Inigo’s smile crashed. “That’s not necessary.” 

“He knows you well. He can watch you, make sure you’re doing okay. Your mental health is just as important to staying alive as your physical health. So it’ll be you, Owain, Morgan and Noire. Is that okay?” 

Inigo repressed a sigh. He didn’t know how to tell Lucina that Severa was like an earworm in his mind and that he didn’t know if he could focus if Owain was around. The idea of explaining anything even marginally sexual to the straight faced no nonse Lucina, even if there was a blatant lack of actual sex going on, made his ears burn. 

“Anything for you, Lucina,” Inigo said. Then he turned and walked toward the entrance of the bunker. His group, sans Owain who had just been told he would be part of it, were already waiting. 

Noire had been practicing archery before the end of the world. She was skilled with a crossbow and would be their long range shooter. Morgan was incredibly brilliant, even for their young age, and thus would be the guide. The building they were exploring had been the home of a company that Brady’s mother ran. He didn’t want to go, however, so he had given all of his intel to Morgan and Lucina, who had crafted an idea of the layout. They thought, because of Maribelle’s relationship with the family who ran Ylisse, she might have squirreled away a clue. Morgan also a had a gun. For worst case scenarios. 

Owain was given two swords. Apparently that was normal for him. Inigo thought about when he had been found and Owain only had the one. Then he thought about how Owain had talked about being seperated. He shivered. It was time for him to go back into that world willingly. 

Inigo was ready to go. He turned to face the door, machete gripped tightly in his hands. Then Morgan, who was supposed to open the door and lead the way, turned and walked around him to hug their sister. Inigo blinked and faced his comrades. Noire, Owain and Morgan were saying goodbye. Why? They were just going out for a few hours. They had to be back before the sun set. 

Owain slid up to Inigo, when it looked like he wasn’t going to move, and said, “You have to say your goodbyes, Inigo. We must make haste.” 

“Goodbye?” Inigo repeated. He raised an eyebrow. “We’re going just a few blocks down the street.” 

Owain furrowed his brow. He had realized the issue and now explaining it would be hard. It was all written clearly on his face how much he didn’t want to burst Inigo’s bubble. “We have to say goodbye every time we leave the bunker. Because we never know when we might not return. You understand how dangerous it is out there, don’t you?” 

Inigo pursed his lips. “Of course I do. But getting all emotional every time anyone goes outside seems a bit much. It just makes people sad. We should be smiling and saying, ‘See you soon!’ instead of crying and saying ‘You might die!’” 

Even as he said it in a hushed whisper to Owain, Inigo caught Severa’s eye from across the room. She leaned around Lucina and glared at him. She was really going to keep him in line wasn’t she? 

With a sigh that he didn’t even try to hide, Inigo turned to the group of his waiting friends. The nearest girl was Kjelle. What luck. She was his current candidate for repopulating the planet. (A position that was sure to change later.) He swept up her hand before she could reel away from him and kissed the top of it gently. “Try not to miss me too much if I never return,” he said with a wink. She narrowed her eyes. 

Lucina took a step forward and a hand fell on Inigo’s shoulder. It was Owain dragging him to the door, away from his show before it got worse. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t taking the goodbye thing seriously. But it seemed entirely unfair. Yesterday, Inigo had been running around looking for death with arms wide open. Today he wanted to live. Having such a tearful goodbye now would feel like admitting to defeat tomorrow. 

In a world full of uncertainty, Inigo was sure of one thing. He would not die on this mission. 

*** 

The building had been undergoing renovations when the virus hit. Construction workers were now guarding the place, like luminescent yellow gargoyles. They even ambled about as if their joints were made of stone. 

Zombies could bite a human anywhere and make a new zombie. But humans had to strike zombies in the brains to take them out. The hard hats made this difficult. They had been easily turned but they would not be easily destroyed. 

Morgan’s plan was to get to high ground with Noire and snipe out some of the easier to kill zombies. If there were just a few hard-hat wearing construction workers, Owain and Inigo could handle them via decapitation. It was nice plan. The one downside Inigo saw was that for a few moments, while Noire cleaned house and Morgan scoped out the area with her, Owain and Inigo would be virtually alone, waiting for their signal. 

Inigo bit the inside of his lip and crafted a silent prayer. He and Owain had never truly been alone since arriving in the bunker. There was no privacy in there. And with Severa wriggling into his brain that morning, Inigo couldn’t help but worry. Worry that Owain would bring up their past himself. And then what would Inigo say? 

Inigo’s eyes were unfocused on the sidewalk across the street from them. Zombies in business casual meandered through the throng. Inigo watched, eyes widened in horror, as one zombie wretched and then dispelled enough parts to make up an entire human body. Black goo encased whole bones and organs. Decaying flesh mixed in pile at the zombie’s feet and when it was done, it just kept walking, a little bit of black drool hanging off of its sagging lips. 

Inigo released a sigh. This was the least romantic place on the planet. Surely nothing could bring Owain to want to talk about- 

“Inigo, I have been meaning to bring up a particular subject with you for quite some time now. That night, three years ago, in my bedroom. When you left.” 

The brains of one of Noire’s fresher kills plopped onto the pavement a few feet away from where they crouched. Inigo stared at the small mass of pink and black and then glared at Owain. “You want to talk about this now? Here?” 

To his credit, at least Owain was blushing. “It didn’t seem like a topic you would want to discuss in the bunker.” 

“You are quite right, my friend,” Inigo said with a tired grin. “It’s actually something I don’t want to talk about like, at all. So-” 

“We don’t have to go back to the way things were,” Owain said sternly. “I just want you to feel comfortable talking to me about anything. But you’re still withdrawn. Perhaps some closure would help?” 

Inigo set free a sigh that had nestled deep inside of him. He didn’t feel much lighter for it. “I just transferred schools. It was for academic reasons, it had nothing to do with you. It wasn’t that deep, Owain.” 

Owain frowned. He didn’t look like he believed it. “You didn’t say goodbye.” 

“I’m not good at goodbyes,” Inigo said. He didn’t add any bite to it, like he intended. In fact, he wilted a litte. He couldn’t help but think of his mother and how he was still carrying her around. 

There was a rustle as Owain leaned forward, probably with the intent of comforting Inigo. He had a good sense for when bad memories came knocking uninvited. And Inigo would have welcomed the contact too. But there was a crackle over their shared radio and Morgan’s voice came through. The boys jumped apart, only then realizing realizing how close they were. 

“You’re in the clear,” Morgan said. “Noire and I will cover you from behind. Be as stealthy as possible, we don’t know how packed the building is.” 

Only three zombies remained within visibility. They were wearing hard hats, of course. But they were spread out. Getting to the building would be easy, thanks to Noire’s accuracy. As soon as the boys were out, the zombies saw them and descended, arms outstretched, mouths gaping open, yellow teeth and split fingernails bared. Inigo swung his machete like a bat, aiming for the soft neck of the zombie closest to him. It came clean off, leaving dark red stains on his blade. Owain took out another one, crossing his two swords into scissors to decapitate the zombie. Then he swung one blade hard out to the side and decapitated the last zombie before it grabbed Inigo. Clean, flawless, quiet. They rushed inside. 

The bottom floor of the skyscraper was encased in glass. Or it had been at one point. The glass doors and floor to ceiling windows had almost all been smashed in. It was bright just in the entrance without any windows to filter the sun, but an intense darkness stretched from deep inside the building, threatening to take over as soon as the sun had grappled as far as allowed. They would be okay without their flashlights for a little while, at least. Good thing too, because otherwise Morgan’s stealth plan would have to have been reworked. 

The story of what had happened on the day of the virus unfolded before them. There had been people working, walking along their narrowly allowed pathways through the construction. For the crew, it had been demolition day. Tile and brick had been ripped out of the floor and placed into haphazard piles behind what had once been construction tape. Large pieces of construction equipment were littered throughout the lobby. The only nice thing was the enormous crystal chandelier that still hung from the high vaulted ceiling. Perhaps if society had fallen on any other day of the year, Maribelle’s legacy would have been one of grace and extravagance. As it was, this building would live on forever in partial ruin. Inigo’s parents hadn’t been as close to Maribelle as Owain’s were, but he knew enough about her to understand that she was most likely rolling in her grave right now. That was, of course, if she had been lucky enough to be buried. 

Between the compact excavators, overturned forklifts, buckets, ladders, and other abandoned construction equipment, there was a lot of material that Owain and Inigo could use to sneak from zombie to zombie. With their quiet weapons, they could, in theory, clear out the room without attracting more than one or two zombies at a time. But it was a large room. They exchanged a nod, then ran in opposite directions. They were always within eyesight of each other. But they had to face forward. They had to push through the rot that hung in the air like a heavy curtain. 

Inigo’s blade swished through the air, silently and deadly, lopping off heads left and right as he tried not to think too much about the thunk of bodies hitting the floor in his wake. It was desert, with grey skin peeling like butter under his oversized knife and skulls giving way like warmed chocolate. He showered in black blood as it rained around him. Barred teeth lunged at the last second, never succeeding but always a threat. He dodged around around them with a blind elegance, never putting too much thought into his movements. Thoughts led to hesitation and hesitation led to death. He leapt and he dashed and crouched from battle to hiding place fluidly. Every movement he made was precise, or else. There was no sound, but Inigo had this inescapable feeling of being in a dance. A morbid, silent ballet with the dead. 

Occasionally Inigo glanced in Owain’s direction to make sure he was still alive. He always was, of course, and Inigo never let his gaze linger. As the old saying went, you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can make sure your friend hasn’t been eaten alive. But still, he glanced. Perhaps almost too frequently. He wondered if Lucina had been wise to send them on this mission together after all. Or would he have been better off out here alone without the person who had, for all intents and purposes, become his human security blanket? Would he have taken it more seriously if he’d had to say goodbye to Owain instead of literally everyone else? 

Getting lost in one’s thoughts was a dangerous pastime in the zombie apocalypse in more ways than one. Inigo almost stepped on a discarded hammer. The construction equipment, while great for sneaking around, was just as dangerous as the zombies. It was all scattered, sharp, busted and rusting. He was pretty sure that a good enough injury would easily become infected. Not necessarily with the zombie virus, but regular pre-apocalypse diseases were still a threat. 

He was keeping his eyes on the sharp scoop of a compact excavator when he was ambushed. Ambush was probably a bad word for it. Ambushes usually required planning and forethought. The zombie that crawled out from under the excavator and reached for his ankle had not planned it's attack. It had simply moved when it saw fresh food. And, wow, did it move. For something with no legs, dragging a half-eaten intestine and a barely clinging on liver behind it, the zombie was quite agile. 

Inigo yelped, and even though it was a knee jerk reaction to a crawling zombie grabbing onto his foot, it was a foolish mistake. It was the first human noise he had made since entering the lobby of the building and now a swarm of hungry eyes were on him. Of course, Inigo didn’t register them. He was too busy suddenly and unexpectedly falling backwards. 

Disoriented by an attack from below, Inigo’s first instinct was to back up. He didn’t notice the plank of wood, lodged in a pile of debris and steadfastly sticking out horizontally, behind him. He twisted his ankle as he fell, but the pain of it was a ghost compared to falling flat and hard on his back. His head banged against something and for a horrible second, he blacked out. Everything could have been over in that second. The hoard could have descended on their new buffet. They could have eaten him quickly, reducing him to a lump of flesh like those poor souls in his parent’s neighborhood. 

The first thing he registered when his eyes opened was that his landing had been, while painful, not as bad as what he would have guessed falling on an uneven pile of brick would feel like. Many broken bones and internal bleeding perhaps. But underneath him, cushioning his fall, was something soft. He groped at it, feeling the squish, and then he heard the squelch. It took everything in his power to turn his head and look at what he was holding. He was afraid it would be a body. His fears were sound, because it was. A rotting, unzombified corpse rested underneath him, like a used up mattress. She was busted and broken against the brick in the same way Inigo could have been. Her blood was all over his hands. A fly rested on her chapped, sunken lips. Inigo felt bile rising his throat. 

He was preoccupied with his new resting place and then the pain in his ankle, and thank god for Owain or Inigo might have unknowingly allowed himself to be taken by the crawling zombie. Owain was there in an instant, of course. Like lightning. Seen before he was heard. It was then, watching Owain’s lips move as he took out approaching zombie after approaching zombie, that Inigo realized his ears were ringing. 

‘Up,’ Owain was mouthing. Inigo shook his head. His ankle hurt so much. His hearing started to clear just as Owain repeated the full phrase, “Can you stand up?” 

“My… Foot…” Inigo grunted. Words were hard. Sitting up was hard. Everything was hard. He prayed that he didn’t have a concussion. 

Owain took out a few more vitally near zombies and then sheathed his swords. Then he picked up Inigo. Effortlessly. It was almost embarrassing. In hindsight it made sense. Inigo had been alone for so long, barely scavenging for food, while Owain had been here in the city working out every day. Sword slinging was not light exercise. Owain dipped his hands under the soft parts of Inigo’s body and with a small grunt dead lifted him up off the ground. Inigo gasped in pain, but otherwise didn’t comment. He was no in position to be picky how he was held. He curled into Owain’s body gratefully and started praying that they would both be okay. 

Inigo’s ears started to ring again as loud bangs echoed throughout the room. Bullets whizzed past Owain’s jogging form and took out a few zombies that were inching closer. Inigo squeezed his eyelids. Not guns. More would come. 

“Owain,” Inigo wheezed when sunlight fell across his hair again. Bit by bit his sense were returning. This was all happening so fast. “You don't have to carry me.” 

“I do,” Owain said. His voice came out in short gasps. He was breathing hard. Inigo was skinny, but he wasn't exactly a bag of feathers. “No one else can.” 

Inigo ran through the list of people they had come in with. Morgan was small, that was fair enough. But Noire was taller than both Owain and Inigo. And she was quite strong. “Noire-” 

“We have to get her back to the bunker,” came Morgan’s voice from just under Inigo’s shoulder. Another loud bang, then they continued, “She’s having a panic attack. She needs her medication.” 

Inigo cursed. He was more aware. And with that awareness came a horrible realization. “You can’t make it all the way back to the bunker with someone who is having a panic attack _and_ someone on a gimp leg. Leave me here.” 

“No-” Owain's voice was loud and firm. 

“I don’t mean to die, numskull. Hide me somewhere. Get Noire home and come back for me.” 

Now Inigo could heard Noire hyperventilating behind him. There was no time to discuss this. She had serious medical needs. He had a bum ankle. He was probably fine. They had killed most of the zombies in this area by this point anyway. 

Inigo jostled in Owain’s arms as he looked around. There was a dumpster across the street in a dark alleyway. No zombies were around that he could see. They could close the lid. He would be fine. Besides it was a little bit poetic. How many women in the past had told him he belonged in the garbage? 

“Put me in there,” he said as he pointed. Morgan and Owain followed his gaze. Both had scrunched up expressions as they thought, though Morgan's seemed a little more laced with serious consideration than Owain’s, who just looked pained. “Come on, it can’t smell any worse than I do right now.” 

There was a groan and Morgan, who was officially the only armed person in the group, had to shoot it. “Okay,” they said. We have to hurry. A hoard might be on their way. 

“I'm not leaving,” Owain said. “I’ll stay here with Inigo.” 

“Owain-” Morgan and Inigo said at the same time. 

“There is no time to argue with me, I’m staying and that’s final.” 

It was apparently. Owain hoisted Inigo up into the dumpster and then leapt in himself. He perched on the edge, said a few words to Morgan who was gripping the sagging Noire in their small hands, and then closed the lid. 

It was aggressively dark in the dumpster. And despite what Inigo had said, it _did_ smell. What ever was under him had been marinating for a week. It was soft and squishy. Inigo tried not to think about the body that had cushioned his fall in the lobby. 

The groans came, and with them the waft of death. It mixed in with everything else and was almost unbearable. Inigo didn’t say anything of course, but Owain dropped his arms around him and pulled him close. It was only then that he realized he was shaking. Was he clammy? Was he sweating? Inigo’s brain flashed to the crawling zombie. Had he been bitten? 

Frantic, Inigo pulled out his flashlight from his belt and picked up his foot. He flicked it on for just a moment and looked at his shoe. No bite marks. When he looked up, Owain’s face was illuminated in the brief moment of light. His eyes were watering. Inigo quickly clicked off the flashlight. If Owain was going to cry, Inigo couldn’t watch. 

“I’m not infected,” Inigo whispered. It had been some time since they were left in the dumpster. The groaning had calmed down. He hoped the dumpster would nullify his words. 

“Good,” Owain said with a breathy sigh. “But you do feel sick. We have to get you back to the bunker soon. I hope Morgan hurries. I don’t think they realized you were feverish when they agreed to leave you here.” 

Inigo fidgeted and squirmed against Owain. He thought maybe he was sitting in Owain’s lap, or was in some other similar body tangle. He hadn’t looked hard enough when the light had been on and he didn’t dare risk it now to find out. He had to get his mind off of things. 

“How old even is Morgan these days?” He asked, feeling safe enough in the quiet to have a conversation. Something light. He hadn’t done much catching up with everyone in the bunker. 

“They just turned 18,” Owain said. He wasn’t speaking in as grand gestures as usual. Perhaps there was nothing remarkable about Morgan’s age. Perhaps he was being conscious of Inigo’s health. 

“A child,” Inigo breathed. “They were a beast on the battlefield. How does a child even get like that? All those violent video games?” 

Owain chuckled under his breath and the sound of it traveled down Inigo’s left arm. So that was Owain’s whole chest. “Perhaps, but I doubt it. It’s unfortunate actually. Morgan has amnesia. All they know is zombies. It’s sad, but it’s also very handy. All they do is think about zombies. How to kill zombies, how to hide from zombies. They are the only one here without any grievances weighing them down. Memories are such a horrible, life threatening burden in this world.” 

The gravity of what Owain was saying was not lost on Inigo. But he didn't need to talk about how bad his own memories were. He was much more interested in someone else having a lack of them. “Amnesia? Since when?” 

“Since day one,” Owain answered. “Something happened when their parents died. Lucina hasn’t talked about it much, but when things calm down a little I’m going to probe her.” 

Lucina was carrying around grief enough for two people. She had both what she had seen, and what her little sibling had seen. Inigo remembered her smile and how beautiful, if fleeting, it had been. He wanted to see that smile again. His hand lightly smacked Owain’s chest. “Don’t you dare make her relive something she doesn't want to.” 

Owain took in a sharp breath, mostly from a pained ego than pained skin. “Why is it so bad if I ask? My Uncle Chrom and Aunt Emmeryn were two of my biggest heroes. I want to know everything about their lives, even how they ended. I watched Emmeryn die. Half of the city still living did. But my book of family legacies is incomplete without Chrom’s.” 

Owain’s voice, though already a whisper, lilted at the end. Inigo snuggled closer. He tucked his head under Owain’s chin and dug his nose into his neck. It stunk, but nothing was worse than the dumpster they called shelter or the graveyard they called a city. 

“Tell me Emmeryn’s story,” Inigo whispered when Owain went stiff under his grasp. He wanted to get comfortable and what better way to relax Owain than to pull him into his element. Story telling. “I wasn’t here for it.” 

Hesitant at first, Owain’s arms lifted and wrapped tighter around Inigo, then rocked him as he told the story. He talked about his aunt had lured an enormous hoard of zombies to the top of the highest skyscraper in Ylisstol and then jumped. The zombies, with no idea of self preservation, jumped after her. Those that survived having their heads bashed on the pavement were too mangled to hunt after the fall. Of course, everyone within a few miles had seen it. They had seen the dot that was their prime minister jump gracefully to her death. That had been in the early hours of the breakout, when some of the luckier people up to that point realized how bad it was. They figured that Emmeryn probably saved a few dozen people with her selfless act, though where those survivors were now, no one knew. 

As Owain rambled, trying and only occasionally failing, to keep his voice low, Inigo let his mind wander. He still listened to the story, but images of his parents weaved in and out of his surface thoughts. He thought about how lost he was without them, and then he clutched Owain’s shirt tighter in his fist. Owain had lost his parents too. And his uncle, and his aunt, and so many other members of his extended family. Sure he had two cousins, but he had lost so much more as the numbers stacked. Inigo didn’t have much of an extended family, as both his parents were first generation immigrants. 

Inigo realized then that grief could not be measured or compared. But they could share it. They could support each other. They could be each other’s rocks to stand on while the tide was still rising. 

They were so close and Severa be damned, it felt good. Inigo suddenly felt hot anywhere their skin came in contact. Emotions stirred in the pit of his stomach. Normally he would have put a lid on them and let them simmer a little longer, denying that he had left the fire burning at all. But now he let the smell of fresh affection fill him. His heart rate sped up. His blood boiled in his veins. 

Severa hadn’t said exactly what she thought it was Inigo should do and Inigo had assumed she meant for him to break his relationship off with Owain completely. But that didn’t feel right. It never had, that was why Inigo had never done it before. And now, in a dumpster of all places, things started to clear up. He didn’t need need to drop the leash he was leading Owain around with. He needed to unclasp the collar and hold Owain close. He wanted to stand on equal, mutual ground with Owain and be his and his alone. To hold his hand as they faced the world world together. Someone else could be responsible for repopulating the planet, because Inigo was pretty sure he was, and had always been, in love. 

At some point in all of these realizations, Inigo fell asleep. He never said a word of them to Owain, who talked until he stopped. Maybe he realized Inigo was out. Had he been humming? Inigo liked it. It was a lullaby. It felt like the last shred of peace on the planet. He was only vaguely aware of some help coming to pick him up and take him to the bunker. But through it all, running cautiously and quietly through the dark streets at night, Owain never let go of his hand. 

*** 

“He needs ta keep off it for a while. Keep it elevated. We don’t have anythin’ frozen to help with the swelling. Sorry. This is the best I can do.” 

Brady’s harsh voice broke through Inigo’s haze as he came to. He opened his eyes to find he was propped up in one of the cots in the bunker. His leg, laid out in front of him, was wrapped in bandages halfway up his calf. He tried to wiggle it, but it made him wince with tenderness. 

Brady noticed he was awake immediately and asked, “How ya feelin’?” 

“F-fine,” Inigo croaked. His throat was so dry. He cleared it and added, “Better. I felt sick, but I guess it passed?” 

Brady sighed. “Yer leg was fucked to hell and back. Sprained and scratched. But they got ya back in time and I’ve pumped ya full of antibiotics. Ya need to keep yer ass in bed for a few days though.” 

Inigo sighed and got a better angle in his seat. The little alcove where the beds were was packed with as many people as it could be. Morgan and Noire were there, the later looking much better than she had outside. Lucina and several of the other people who had stayed behind were there. Owain stood quietly at the end of the cot, peering at Inigo. Inigo let out a sigh. They were all safe. Nothing disastrous had happened and they were all alive. As long as they all stayed in the bunker, they would be okay. 

“Good job,” Lucina said with a nod at Brady. “Inigo needs his rest, but we still have a job to do. I need a team to go back to the building they were exploring.” 

Inigo rolled his eyes and fell back onto his pillows with a fwumph. Of course. He would never know peace as long as his friends were putting their lives in danger out on the streets while he sat around unable to help. 

“I’ll go in Inigo’s place,” Lucina said bravely. 

“No ma’am!” Cynthia, piping up from around the corner. Her small body bounced into the room and she stood up straight at attention, her orange pigtails bouncing into place around her face. “You are supposed to be on the next resting shift! I’ll go. The Justice Cabal can handle this one!” 

Inigo had half a mind to go to sleep despite all of the ruckus these guys were creating around his bed. But something tickled in the back of his mind. He remembered the Justice Cabal. Just barely. It was a nerd club from his high school. A group of dorks gathered weekly to play games like dungeons and dragons. It consisted of a few nobodies Inigo didn’t remember anymore, Morgan, Cynthia and- 

Inigo sat up straight, his eyes wide. His chest puffed in and out rapidly as he tried to calm his breath. He was going to have a panic attack. He had a feeling Noire wouldn’t want to share what precious little medication she had, so his eyes landed on the brunette at the end of his bed and he wheezed, “Owain, no-” 

Owain rushed around the corner of his bed instantly, brushing some long bangs out of Inigo’s face. Brady also flew to his attention. He rested a hand on Inigo’s back and said, with his best bedside manner, “Breathe, dammit.” 

“Inigo, what’s wrong?” Owain asked in a softer voice. Who knew Owain could have a softer voice than… well, anyone? It felt like he was petting Inigo’s heart, though, and Inigo took a few, sharp breaths. 

“You can’t go,” Inigo said. He wasn’t hyperventilating anymore, but his voice was unavoidably wobbly. His eyes started to prickle with tears even as his thoughts came to fruition in his throat. “It’s so fucking dangerous out there.” 

“I know,” Owain said, knotting his eyebrows together. “That’s exactly why we have to go. We have to save the world so that it stops being so dangerous!” 

“Owain, please,” Inigo sobbed. He tried whispering. He was only a little self conscious of the fact that everyone in the bunker was watching him have a melt down. “Please don’t leave me.” 

Owain gave Brady a brief look and Brady took a full step back so that Owain could get closer to Inigo. His hand that had brushed away Inigo’s hair slid down his face to cup his cheek. Inigo leaned into it and a tear finally broke free. As the dam was broken, so did the rivers fall and Inigo cried helplessly into Owain’s palm. Maybe Owain would soak up his desperation through osmosis. 

“It won’t be for long Inigo. I’m the great and powerful Owain Dark. Legions of the undead are no match for me. I promise.” 

Owain smirked at him and Inigo smirked back. He shifted as if he was going to stand up, but someone cleared their throat behind them. Owain looked over his shoulder and Inigo peered around him. Lucina. She had a pointed look on her face. The small fire that had been freshly kindled in his heart was snuffed out. He knew what was coming. He hated it. 

“We have to say goodbye, though,” Owain said, his eyes darting. “It’s bunker rules.” 

The desperation was back in full force. Inigo’s hands flew to the collar of Owain’s shirt and gripped him tightly. “No,” he hissed. 

“I’m sorry,” Owain said. 

“Just…” Inigo sucked in a deep breath. He tried to steady his heart again but it was thumping wildly. He didn’t even care that everyone was watching him anymore. “Don’t be a hero, okay? Come back to me.” 

Owain winced, but he grinned. “Don’t be a hero? That’s like asking me to chop off my own sword hand, you know that. The kind of heroic nature I have cannot be dampened or quelled.” 

Inigo could have rolled his eyes, but he made his mind up instead. He was set on the task ahead of him. He tugged on Owain’s collar until he was pulled down and their faces came together. He missed, because Inigo’s hands weren’t where they needed to be to guide Owain. He let go of the collar, straightened Owain’s face and tried again, this time hitting the mark perfectly. It took Owain a second to realize what was happening, but when he got the hang of it and they were kissing for real, Inigo melted into him. 

Owain and Inigo had kissed before. Many times. But this was different. Not only had it been three years since they last kissed, but they had never done it with so many feelings attached. At least Inigo hadn’t. He had always put up a wall between his heart and Owain’s. Now the wall was down. All of his realizations from his half-sleep epiphany were still valid. He was in love with Owain, and he was going to admit it now. In front of the whole bunker. 

Inigo pulled a half inch away from Owain, his lips still puffy from the kiss. Owain chased him for a second, and then they were looking at each other with half lidded eyes. Someone in the room whistled and they both blushed. 

“Inigo,” Owain hissed. “We don’t have to- You said we couldn’t-” 

Inigo pulled away a little further so that he could shake his head, but he kept Owain’s face held firmly in his hands. “Forget all that shit I said earlier. I have something important I need to tell you, but I won’t say it until you get back. Yout won’t have to wait so long if you hurry.” 

Owain grinned. It was brilliant. A small sun in the underground darkness of the bunker. Inigo had never been so sure of anything in his whole life as he was of Owain in that moment. “I’ll be back faster than lightning, I swear it. For now, goodb-” 

Inigo cut him off with another kiss and Owain moaned happily into it. Inigo hoped that a kiss would suffice for his goodbye but that it would also have Owain rushing back to him soon. He wasn’t great at letting go of the people he loved. 

*** 

It was a two full days before the squad came back from their scouting mission of the building. Inigo’s whole body periodically convulsed with worry. Brady tried to keep him in bed, but he was antsy. 

Inigo slumped near the entrance to the bunker, picking at his raw cuticles. They were a mess. He’d had such lovely hands before the end of the world. There were also bags under his eyes and he was gaunt and pale. His hair was growing shaggy and he had an embarrassing amount of split ends. He only had a few freckles to his name, where in the past he’d had a perfect dusting across the bridge of his nose. Would the apocalypse take not only his family and the love of his life but also his youthful beauty? 

The door to the bunker slid open. It wasn’t a sudden event, because it was a gradual movement. The door was iron and thick and heavy. But it opened and Inigo popped to his feet, balancing against the wall so that he didn’t have to put pressure on his bum foot. 

Cynthia was the first through, and her arms were raised triumphantly above her head as she announced, “We found it! We found a clue!” 

Before Inigo could even make sure that Owain was with her, the returning squad was swarmed. Lucina was in first, patting Cynthia on the back and congratulating them. Apparently what they found were letters. Copies of letters actually. Maribelle had written to Lissa about helping to fund the manufacturing of NAGA’s blessings and then had made copies of her own letters to keep for own financial records. In the letters was an address. The location of the secret laboratory. Falchion would be there for sure. Lucina promised that as soon as they were done taking note of all of the vital information in the letters, they would be bequeathed to Brady. He had already started sobbing at the mere mention of his mother’s name and now was a total mess on the floor. 

Inigo took advantage of Brady’s distraction and hobbled through the crowd on both of his feet until his fingers founds Owain’s wrist. He looked at the hand first, that hand that was so important to Owain, and then trailed his gaze up Owain’s arm past his strange genetic birthmark, to his face. He was smiling. His cheeks were a little dirtier than they had been when he left, but he was smiling and he was so bright. 

“I’m in love with you,” Inigo said quietly. 

Owain beamed and scooped Inigo off his feet. Inigo couldn’t help it. His smile was ear to ear and he was lightly crying himself. The bunker would be flooded at this rate. “I love you so much, Inigo!” Owain proclaimed. 

“Cool,” Inigo said. Then he kissed Owain. Held up off of his feet and balanced on Owain’s hips, he bent down, grabbed Owain’s face in his hands and kissed him hard. Owain opened his mouth to invite him in and it was all muscle memory from there. They knew each other’s bodies so well, but their kisses had never felt like this before. They had always been all heat with no fire. Now Inigo was ablaze. 

By the time they pulled away from each other, Inigo wasn’t crying anymore. He just couldn’t stop smiling at Owain. And Owain couldn’t stop smiling back at him. They were in love. But what did that mean? Were they dating? He had to be clear and precise about the parameters of their relationship. 

Inigo said. “I want to be your boyfriend.” 

Owain smirked. He had a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “What about your plans to repopulate the earth?” 

Even has his cheeks burned at the callout, Inigo rolled his eyes. “Well I don’t think any of the ladies here are interested in doing that with me. And I really don’t wanna die a virgin, so you’re up buddy.” 

“If I catch either of you trying to fix a virginity problem in _this_ bunker where there are _children present_ and _no doors_ I will _personally_ kill you,” came Severa’s voice from the crowd. Inigo hoped she was the only one eavesdropping. She was bad enough by herself. “For the greater good.” 

Inigo ignored her and bent down into Owain again. They kissed for a longer moment as the crowd started to disperse. Inigo made a silent pledge to never leave Owain, with or without a goodbye, ever again.


	3. come morning light you and i'll be safe and sound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OWAINIGO WEEK IS OVER, SORRY THIS IS A COUPLE OF DAYS LATE TAT Thank you for reading it anyway. The prompt i did for day 3 was Light.  
> I'm uploading a playlist with all of the songs I stole chapter titles from onto my Tumblr @Lieano so check that out if you'd like~ Thank you for reading!!! I hope you enjoyed this. The last chapter will go up on August 7th, I hope you can wait patiently. :) See you then!!  
> \--  
> EDIT: i'm not going to put the 4th chapter up here, if i write it i'll add it as a one shot and make a series. thank u for your support and patience. :)

If Lucina and Brady had their way, Inigo would not have gone on a mission so soon. It was his first day since Brady declared his ankle healed and ready to be walked on. “Just because ya ain’t a gimp doesn’t mean you can go around liftin’ heavy shit!” he had exclaimed a moment later when Inigo volunteered for the mission Lucina proposed.

“I’ve felt so useless this week,” Inigo whined. He _really_ whined too. Being obnoxious was one if his most powerful weapons if used intentionally, and he hoped it could get him kicked out of the bunker. “I need to stretch! I need to smell fresh air and feel the sun!” 

“Fresh isn’t exactly the adjective I would use to describe the city right now,” Owain said. “Decaying, revolting, fetid. Those are far more accurate.” 

It had officially been two weeks since the zombie virus first hit Ylisse and its neighbors. The dead were still walking, but they weren’t getting any prettier. Their skin had all turned from gray to something bordering black. A few were inflating in awkward places, but they never burst. But still they walked. The decaying process for a zombie seemed to be never ending. Waiting out the virus was still not an option. They needed the cure so that nature could do to those poor lost souls what it did best and take their bodies back into the ground. 

“Then the sun!” Inigo exclaimed. “I need some sun! You can almost see my veins! I have one freckle left! Living off of Owain’s shining personality isn’t doing the trick anymore.” 

Owain beamed. “Is that a compliment?” 

“No, sweetheart, shut up. Lucina, please! Let me go! I need to walk around and get some exercise badly.” 

Lucina sighed heavily and met Brady’s eyes. She trusted him. And to be fair, it wasn’t just Inigo’s ankle that was a liability. He hadn’t been moving much at all. It had only been eight days, but his stamina could be lower than average. He would argue that he had to start somewhere. Preferably before the big excavation of Ylisstol’s secret medical laboratory. 

In his eyes, this mission was perfect. They needed more weapons, because the lab was near what had been a makeshift safe zone at the beginning of the virus spread. Lots of people had gathered in one place to be protected by the military. They accidentally let in some wrong people, bitten people, and the whole place had very quickly turned from a safe zone to a quarantine zone. Of course, with the virus spreading throughout the city in a matter of hours, no one ever managed to clean the place up. Basically, the area around the lab would be teaming with the largest hoard of trapped zombies anyone in the bunker had ever seen. They were slightly under prepared for it. 

They had tapped out the resources at most of the shops near them that held inventory in weapons. But there was one place they hadn’t visited yet. Lucina had been saving it for a rainy day such as this. Kjelle’s mother had run a gun shop just at the edge of the city. It was a far walk, so Inigo would get some blood flowing in his legs. Also, Kjelle was confident that her mother had secured the building before she had rushed into battle herself at the beginning of the virus spread. The chances of any other random survivors being able to make it past her mother’s security were slim to none. So it would be _stuffed_ with weapons. Heavy lifting would be required. It was a full body workout. 

Lucina sighed again and turned back to Inigo. “Fine,” she said. “But don’t make us have to come and get you like last time. This mission is important. Be safe, but be efficient.” 

Inigo saluted her and then, beaming, ran to get suited up with the rest of the crew. 

Obviously Kjelle was going. Not only did she know where the gun shop was and how to disable her mother’s security system, but she was also the strongest person in the bunker by far. Yarne was also going for strength. And then there was Nah. 

“Really?” Inigo asked under his breath. “They’re questioning if I’m going to screw this up but they’re sending one of the kids in?” 

“Hey!” Nah shouted as she grabbed a handgun and holstered it. “I heard that. And I’ll have you know I’m the most vital part of this plan.” 

“I thought Kjelle was-” 

“The only way in the gunshop is through a small hole. So if it weren’t for my _size_ you wouldn’t even be able to get in and get those weapons.” 

“Sorry,” Inigo said, lifting his hand in surrender. “I’m just… You’re even younger than Morgan, aren’t you? And you don’t have amnesia like them. Aren’t you scared?” 

Nah bared her shiny teeth and squared her shoulders in an attempt to make herself look bigger. It didn’t really work. “I’m not scared at all. I’m fine. It’s Yarne you should be worried about.” 

With that, Nah turned on her heels and stomped toward the door of the bunker. She was right, of course. They were taking the most nervous person in the bunker, even compared to the one who took medication for her anxiety. Yarne looked up at the mention of his name and smiled weakly at Inigo who waved back. Most people went out into battle wearing bullet proof vests as protection against the zombies. Yarne couldn’t, because he was never without a particular furry hoody with long bunny ears stitched into the hood. He wore it everywhere. 

“At least it’s got pockets,” Inigo muttered, turning away from Yarne this time so that he wasn’t heard again. “Maybe he can stuff them full of bullets before he starts screaming.” 

“Yarne is getting better.” Inigo’s head popped up when he was startled by the sudden voice. It was Owain. Where had he come from. “But keep an eye on him, won’t you?” 

Inigo grinned. He couldn’t help smiling around Owain. His bleak world had been a little less horrible since he’d confessed. Granted, they still hadn’t been able to go on a date yet, but Inigo was just as happy cuddling and making out in every corner of the bunker in between Owain’s missions. 

“Shouldn’t you be asking all of them to look after me?” Inigo asked, leaning toward Owain enticingly. “Your weak, broken boyfriend is about to fling himself back into the hoards of the undead. Aren’t you worried?” 

Owain’s hands rubbed at Inigo’s arms. His expression was soft, but he was smiling. “Of course I am. But I have faith that you’ll come back. You’re stronger than you think you are.” Inigo melted in his grip. He pursed his lips and started to lean forward, eager for the kiss that was rightfully his. But then Owain went on. “Besides if anything happens to you, Kjelle will be there. She is the only person I know who’s strength and stamina outclass even my own. And I bet you would just love to be carried all the way back to the bunker in her arms.” 

Inigo pulled back just an inch. He tried to be stern, but he couldn't. A laugh shot out of his mouth, spraying Owain’s chest with his spit. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I would love that.” When he leaned forward again, it was with far more tenacity. “You know me so well, dork.” 

They kissed and Inigo sucked in a breath through his nose before he opened his mouth and pressed deeper into Owain. His arms slung around Owain’s neck desperately and Owain’s hands found his hips. They could have stayed at it all day, but Kjelle was yelling at the front door for Inigo to hurry up and say his goodbyes. Little did she know that this _was_ his goodbye. He and Owain had perfected the process. 

“Farewell, my love!” Owain bellowed when Inigo was finally dragged away. “May the angels see you safely back into my arms come morning light!” 

“Love you too, babe!” Inigo shouted back. And then the door to the bunker shut heavy behind him. 

*** 

Things could have gone much worse in Inigo’s opinion. They had to wait for Nah, who was the only one who could fit in through the dog door to unlock the gun shop from the inside. While they waited, they were positioned very conveniently under a tree. The tree was green and seemed to be doing just fine without humans around to care for it. 

A gentle breeze kicked up and while Inigo held his breath so that he wasn’t overwhelmed with the stench of death it inevitably contained, the tree let go of a leaf. It landed in Inigo’s hair, so he plucked it out by the stem gently. It was a nice leaf. All of the points were intact. It was bright green and soft. Inigo gently pocketed it. 

“Why did you do that?” Inigo lifted his head and looked up into Yarne’s bulging eyes. “Is it important? Do _I_ need a leaf?” 

Inigo frowned. “No. It’s just a keepsake. It’s nothing important.” 

“A keepsake?” Yarne lifted an eyebrow suspiciously. “You want to remember this? I don’t want to remember anything that happens out of the burrow.” 

“The burrow?” 

“Oh it’s what I call the bunker. Don’t worry about it.” 

Inigo grinned. “Fine. But only if you forget about my leaf.” 

Kjelle shushed them just then because the front door to the gunshop creaked open. Nah’s tiny face poked out between the crack, checked up and down the street, then motioned for her companions to rush inside with her. Quietly, they did. 

When the door shut behind them, Kjelle clapped Nah on the shoulder and said, “Good job kiddo. Now, everyone pack up as much as you can carry. There’s enough here that we can all take sizable loads and then come back for more when we need it. But everything we take today we’re going to use to take the lab. Keep that in mind. Take only what you think people in our group will and can use.” 

They split up. While not typically recommended if you couldn’t see your companinions, the shop wasn’t too large, and since it had been so secured, they were pretty confident that no zombies lurked in the aisles. 

Honestly it almost wasn’t a good thing that was so empty. Inigo couldn’t put a finger on it, but there was something unsettling about being in a place that was untouched by zombies. There was some dust but no blood. Inigo wished he could take the musty but rot free smell of it and mold it into a candle. It was so quiet. And for once that wasn’t a bad thing? Inigo had a hard time wrapping his mind around it. 

Inigo slung his duffle bag around his shoulder and moved behind the cash register. There were small blades in a glass case and large blades hung up on the wall. He pocketed as many knives as he could, but most of the people in the bunker preferred swords other large weapons. He grabbed several swords off the wall, some that fit in his bag and some that didn’t. He strapped the later ones onto the outside of the bag. There was a sparse collection of novelty replica swords and Inigo picked one at random, hoping that it was one that Owain would recognize. There were also a few very dramatically long spears. He grabbed two and set them on the counter, deciding that Kjelle could carry them back if she wanted to share them with Cynthia. The others were probably loading up on guns, crossbows and ammunition. He hollered at Kjelle about the spears and then started to pursue elsewhere. 

Inigo’s eyes glazed over as he wandered around the shop until something colorful caught his attention. In the back hanging from a narrow wall was a line of seed packets. There were some vegetables and some flowers. Inigo tilted his head but then remembered that Kjelle’s father had been a farmer before he married and moved to the big city. This must have been his little corner of the shop. Inigo grabbed handfuls of the packets. He heavily favored vegetables, but didn’t neglect to include a few flowers. They would be good for morale, Inigo thought. 

“Yarne!” Inigo called over his shoulder. 

Yarne was too fast. He was at Inigo’s side in an instant, making him jump a little. “Can I help you Inigo?” 

“Here,” Inigo said, holding out the packets. “Put these in your hoody pockets. I don’t want them to get sliced up in my bag.” 

Yarne frowned at the packets, but he did take them. “Seeds?” 

Inigo grinned. “Of course! Don’t you miss carrots?” 

“Are you making fun of my hoody?” 

Inigo blew a raspberry and turned back to the wall. He was about to leave it be when something pink caught his eye. Before he could think about it too much, Inigo grabbed the packet and shoved it in Yarne’s pocket himself, just as Yarne was storing the other packets begrudgingly. “Don’t lose them,” Inigo said. Then he turned away. 

After the seed wall, Inigo’s attention was drawn to a pair of doors. One had a strange frosted glass window porthole window in it. The other was narrow and plain. He opened the plain one first, cautiously of course, and peered into the darkness. There was a generator that was turned off and a couple of oil canteens. Inigo picked one up to consider the benefits of taking it with him when Yarne, who apparently hadn’t left yet, bumped into him. 

The canteen fell out of Inigo’s hands and spilled on the floor in front of the other door. Once every curse he owned was out in the open, Inigo glared over his shoulder at Yarne. “What are you-” 

“Shh!” Yarne hissed. His eyes were wild. More wild than normal. He was staring at the other door trepidatiously. “I smell something…” 

Inigo squinted and smelled the air. All he could smell was oil. Thankfully none of it had gotten on him, but it was everywhere else now. Only, he didn’t need to smell it. Because a moment later he heard it. A slow scratch on the wood behind the door. A soft moan. 

Inigo exchanged a wide eyed look with Yarne. Yarne had started to shake. So they were thinking the same thing. Somehow, against everything Kjelle believed about her mother’s gunshop, zombies had gotten in. But they were behind the door. They weren’t in immediate danger. 

Yarne whimpered, and as if it had been summoned a gnarled hand slammed up against the glass window. It was a small round window in the top middle of the door. If the zombies broke through, the danger still would not be immediate. But they needed to get out. They didn’t know how many were hidden inside. It was a risk. 

Inigo turned to yell for Nah and Kjelle when he heard the glass shatter. Yarne yelped and took a full step back. Four zombie hands from an indeterminate amount of zombies cupped the frame of the broken window, occasionally willfully slicing themselves on a piece of broken glass. The hole wasn’t big enough for a whole head to fit through, but a jaw gnashed on the inside. Inigo’s blood ran cold. It was the stuff of nightmares. 

“Inigo! Yarne!” came Kjelle’s commanding voice from an aisle over. Inigo jumped. He was suddenly very afraid that the zombies inside were her parents. He couldn’t let her see them. 

“Kjelle-” he started to shout, but she was already there. She looked from the boys to the zombies and her brow knotted. 

“Who is in there?” 

Inigo fumbled to withdraw one of the swords strapped to his bag. “Kjelle you don’t have to-” 

“It’s not my parents,” she said. “They weren’t here when the outbreak started. They were out in the city being heroes. I know for a fact. So the question still stands. Who are these people? Their employees maybe?” 

Inigo let out a loud sigh. “Poor bastards is who they are,” he said. “We should-” 

“Hey, guys, look what I found!” 

Completely oblivious to what was happening, Nah bounced up to the group holding a giant black weapon. She was wearing a tank as a backpack and it made her look even smaller than she already was. Attached to the tank via a hose was a gun that she held in both of her hands. No. Not a gun. A flamethrower. 

It all happened so fast. Nah didn’t wait for her friends to react to her new find. She saw the zombies clawing at the door and grinned wide, her teeth bared. And she pulled the trigger. 

“Look!” she cried with glee as the zombies inside the windowed door caught ablaze. “I’m a dragon! Rawr! Ahahaha!” 

Yarne didn’t wait for the worst case scenario. He nimbly ducked around the stream of fire and picked Nah up by her middle with one arm. Then he was gone, faster than a bullet out of a gun, Nah yelling behind him as she dropped the ignition of her flamethrower and it bounced behind them. Kjelle was hot on his heels, picking up the freshly healed Inigo before he could even ask. The oil caught on fire. They ran. They ran as fast as they could as the zombies escaped their closet, completely unfazed by the fire, and the flames licked their way to the security closet. 

With Yarne’s speed and Kjelle’s strength, they were halfway down the street when the building exploded. Inigo barely had enough energy to spare to admire the way Kjelle was cradling him like a bride. He was too busy thinking about the future as the flames billowed high into the sky. The plan to cure the city had better work. They were running out of resources. 

*** 

“Owain!” Inigo shouted as he walked through the bunker door. He had to beat his companions to relaying the bad news. He had to get to Owain before things got heavy. “I have a birthday present for you.” 

A few things had fallen off his bag as they fled the explosion, but Inigo had most of what he collected. Kjelle had even managed to strap the spears to her person securely enough. Even though they would never be able to go back to the shop, Inigo considered the journey a success. Especially because he had made it out with a special present for his boyfriend. No one could be mad about that. They had to enjoy the little things. 

Owain saw Inigo before Inigo saw him. His hands gripped Inigo’s shoulders and Inigo shed his duffle bag, haphazardly letting it fall to the floor with a clang so that he could turn and melt into Owain’s arms. He rested his cheek on Owain’s shoulder and Owain said, “You remembered my birthday!” 

Inigo leaned back and smiled. “Of course I didn’t. I asked Cynthia what your birthday was a couple of days ago. The fact that it was so soon was just my luck I guess.” He winked. 

Owain, bless him, just laughed. It was a deep, booming laugh that damn near shook the whole bunker. After a quick moment of rummaging, Inigo handed him the nerd sword and he gasped. 

“Inigo! What gloriousness! Do you have any idea what you-” 

“What do you mean it’s gone?!” 

Owain turned, effectively interrupted from his glee. In a different alcove of the bunker, but still semi-within earshot, Kjelle was explaining the explosion. Nah was sitting on a bench, pouting, clutching her flamethrower as if it might be taken from her. Lucina had turned pale, but it was Noire who had shouted. A few of the others seemed justifiably alarmed too. 

“There was an explosion?” Owain asked. 

“It’s fine, right?” Inigo asked, following Owain to the group. “We got a ton of supplies. And if we find Falchion, we won’t need as many weapons.” His heart clenched even as he rationalized the explosion. So was that the end of their celebration? Was it back to business? The apocalypse was all work and no play. 

Lucina gave him a pained look. “It’s always nice to have a back up plan. But I suppose you’re not wrong.” She cleared her throat to command the attention of everyone. She did instantly. She always did. No matter their different proclivities and emotions, the other twelve survivors would always give Lucina their utmost respect. “Get rest. We’ll spend tomorrow morning planning and warming up, and then we’ll set out. I’ll need everyone on this mission and I’ll need everyone at their absolute best. This is the most important thing we have ever done since the virus spread. Perhaps in our whole lives. We have to get it right. You’re all dismissed.” 

They dispersed, quietly, most heading to the cots to get to bed right away. Though there were a few who went to relax in other ways. Everyone had their own routines. Owain picked up his new dork sword again to admire it and Inigo took his very clear distraction to slip away. He pickpocketed Yarne very quickly, taking out the packet of pink flowers before Yarne could notice. Then he sped to an untouched corner of the bunker. 

In the very back of the bunker, near the storage of random emergency tools that they didn’t use too often, there was a little nook in the wall that wasn’t immediately noticeable if walking by. Inigo bent and felt around in the darkness until he found a little wooden board. With a small grin, Inigo slid it out of the darkness. 

It was a corkboard with a wooden frame. Collected on the board were all manner of small knick knacks. A lug nut, a used match, the handle of a mug that broke a couple days ago. All things that had been collected during Inigo’s healing confinement in the bunker. To anyone else they would all be considered trash. But to Inigo, they were the future. 

Written across the top of the board in red marker was the words ‘Dream Board’. And that’s what it was. The objects all represented things Inigo spent his time at the end of the world dreaming about. The lug nut for a car, the match for scented candles, the mug handle for hot chocolate. He hadn’t shown anyone, of course. It was embarrassing. But whenever the path ahead seemed bleak, looking at the dreamboard was like an instant shot of hope directly into his veins. 

Inigo spread the leaf he had pocketed earlier out on the corkboard and pinned it with a little needle. He’d found a small box of them in the junk cabinet he was crouched in and had hoarded them. No one had asked for them so he felt justified enough. No one had to know he had taken them because no one had to know about his secret treasure trove. 

“What is that?” 

Inigo’s soul casually left his body for a minute, shot up to the moon, and then came back. He whirled around quickly, eyes wild and breath coming out short. “Owain!” he gasped. “Don’t fucking scare me like that.” 

Owain didn’t seem bothered. He looked at Inigo and then at the board partially hidden against Inigo’s chest. Then he smirked and knelt close. “Dream board?” he read outloud. “Are these tokens of prophetic dreams you’ve had? You absolutely have to tell me if you’re having prophetic dreams!” 

Inigo opened and closed his mouth at least three times each before he said in a small tone, “I’m not having prophetic dreams, babe.” 

Owain smiled softly, as if to say he knew, then he nodded at the board. The question mark hung in the air in big bold font. Inigo sighed. His neck burned with embarrassment. 

“It’s my… dream board… for the future. I’ve been collecting little things that remind me of the old world. The world I want again. The one where I can live in a house with a bed and walk the nice smelling streets freely and I’m not constantly being hunted by dead people.” 

Owain nodded, signaling that he understood. He picked up the seed packet that Inigo had set aside. “What does this remind you of?” 

Despite himself, Inigo smiled. “Flowers, duh. I want to grow a garden when this all over. A flower garden. One that’s purely just aesthetically beautiful and makes me happy. I was just gonna rip the package apart and take the picture on the front for-” 

“No,” Owain said, holding the seed packet in his hands protectively as Inigo reached for them. “Keep the seeds in there. This will all be over in a couple of days and then we can grow a garden together. And these flowers will be our first ones.” 

Inigo tried to cover his smile. He put a hand to his face bashfully and turned the other way. He couldn’t tamp down the emotions swirling inside of him. How did Owain manage to give him butterflies in a world that usually just made him want to vomit? It was magic. Daringly, he peeked over his shoulder and met Owain’s gaze. They were both smiling. Happiness was easier to catch when they were together. They were each other’s sun in a dark world. 

“I really think this is a good idea,” Owain said as he pinned the whole seed packet to the board. “It’s like… your light at the end of the tunnel.” 

Inigo hummed and leaned down to rest his cheek on Owain’s shoulder and looked at the board. It didn’t have much yet. But everytime he looked at it, a fire started in his heart. He thought about where he had been and where he was going. And he couldn’t be more proud of himself. 

“Owain,” Inigo said after a quiet moment. “That day you found me in my parent’s house and rescued me… I wanted to kill myself.” 

Owain was silent, but Inigo felt his body shift under him. His eyes prickled as he elaborated. “At the supermarket I considered letting that zombie that had you pinned eat me. I wanted to die. I thought anything was better than… living like this. In this world. But after seeing how hard you worked so hard to keep me alive... You saved me from the zombies, of course, but you also saved me from myself. You aren’t even aware of all you did for me, are you?” 

Finally Inigo lifted his head and looked at Owain. His eyes were red rimmed and his mouth was open just a gap. He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry that you went through that.” 

Inigo smiled and picked up one of his hands. “It’s fine now. You pulled me back from the edge. The dream board is nice but… Owain, _you_ are the light at the end of my tunnel.” 

Owain sniffled. He didn’t respond right away. Ingo sat up straighter when he realized Owain’s frown wasn’t dissipating. “What’s wrong?” 

“I wasn’t…” Owain took a deep breath. “I wasn’t with my parents when they died. Mom left me a voicemail when she was turning. I didn’t even answer the phone because I was trying to rescue people. People I couldn’t even keep alive… Everything was dark, but she had left me that voicemail. And it was my light. Until my phone died.” 

“Owain…” 

“It had power for four days. I conserved the battery as much as I could. It was fate that I would find you hours after hearing my mother’s voice for the last time.” 

At a loss for words, Inigo settled back down into Owain’s side. They sat there in front of the dream board for a long moment. They didn’t say a word, but not many were needed for this. Their hearts thumped in tandem and whispered sorrows and sweet nothings on their account. 

*** 

The sun was high in the sky, reflecting off the massive silver skyscrapers of Ylisstol, heating the pavement like a skillet. The deceased wandered through it with an eternal hunger. It was hell itself, and it was finally going to meet its match in the form of thirteen heavily armed angels. 

There was a swarm of zombies unlike any other waiting for Lucina’s small band of heroes. There was no doubt on the planet or in the heavens above that they were risking life and limb to find the cure. But someone had to do it, and they were just young enough and just brave enough to not know better than to volunteer. 

Since there was no reason to worry about attracting more zombies in the situation they were getting into, Laurent, Brady, Morgan were given guns. Loud ones, with all of the back up ammunition they could carry. Noire still preferred her crossbow. Lucina and Severa carried swords that were bigger by far than Owain’s two. Cynthia and Kjelle held their prized spears in two hands. Gerome had a huge firewood axe. No one asked why he preferred it. Inigo had his machete and Yarne had an arsenal of throwing knives. And little Nah, leading the group with her teeth bared and her eyes ablaze with determination, had her flamethrower. 

The zombies piled up as soon as they saw the fresh meat. But none got a taste. The thirteen blazed and shot and hacked and slashed their way through the unholy mob. They were precise. They were efficient. They had each other’s backs. 

The safe zone had been set up with multiple levels of quarantine so they didn’t have to kill every single zombie that was corralled inside. They simply took out what they needed to and shut off exits as they went. The fences were surprisingly and blessedly sturdy. Lucina barked orders the whole time and the rest of the survivors followed her with no questions asked. They were a well programmed and oiled machine. 

The mass of zombies barely looked like humans anymore. They were bloated and discolored. They pressed into each other in an attempt to get fresh human flesh, making it hard to tell one zombie from another. Black nails and bared teeth reached for the thirteen. The anguished cries of a mass grave rose to deafening levels. No one flinched. 

As Inigo pushed through the ever growing waves of the undead, he imagined himself walking through a metaphorical tunnel. There was light at the end of it, but there was light all around him too. His friends. His boyfriend. His own strength and confidence. He felt as though he were walking on air. He barely even registered how bad it was. Here was the largest hoard of zombies Inigo had ever seen. It didn’t bother him. It was the worst part of the storm and he would get through it. 

“I see the lab!” Lucina shouted over the moaning. “Nah, kill the fire!” 

Nah obeyed and the thirteen turned to see the building Lucina was pointing at. They were situated at the top of a hill, looking down on an ever moving sea of hungry zombies. It was a small flat white building. There were army vehicles perched all around. 

“We’re going to make a path, climb onto those vehicles and enter through the roof. Stay close.” 

How irreversibly damaged were the psyches of these children that fighting their way through a swarm of bodies and blood meant nothing to them? How hard would it be to adjust to life when this was over if pushing a blade through a human skull was muscle memory? They had been students. They had been kids. And now they were the last line of defense between animalistic chaos and civilized humanity. Getting to the building was a dance for them. Just another party where too many people drank too many solo cups of vodka and undulated in tight circles. 

Inigo was the last one on the roof. He helped Noire up onto the military vehicle and then turned around to decapitate a zombie that had grabbed his ankle. (“Get in line, buddy.”) When he turned back to leap to the roof, it was to find Owain standing at the edge, hand outstretched, a fleck of blood on this cheek, smile broad. Inigo smiled back and he jumped, hands reaching for him just as he went airborne. 

The roof door closed behind them with a bang. It was dark. The muffled chorus of moaning droned on outside. Everyone had at least two flashlights, so at least thirteen beams of light lit up all at once. Lucina quietly ushered them to follow her. 

They walked down a flight of stairs to the first floor. The only floor. The building was a little weird. Before the apocalypse, it had been a nondescript building in the middle of the industrial part of town. Most people probably assumed it for a storage facility. But it had always been a secret government lab. It had always been the last hope of Ylisse. There were no windows. There were only a few doors. Everything was heavily locked. The fact that the military had decided to set up a safe zone there at the start of the breakout was pure coincidence. 

At the bottom of the steps, Lucina turned to her team one more time. She smirked. “Good job, everyone. I’m so proud of each and every one of you.” Then she opened the door. 

Thirteen beams of light streamed into the laboratory, and thirteen hearts broke at what they saw inside. 

Destruction. Overturned tables, smashed vials, ruined papers. They spread out, rifled through the belongings. There was nothing. Nothing whole. Nothing left. 

“How?” Lucina whispered when the last dented filing cabinet was searched. “How did this happen?” 

No one had an answer. No one had any hope left. Inigo looked at the broken room and thought, _‘Is this our world now?’_

After a long silence, a pause to reflect on what this meant, Lucina started again. “My father knew this might happen. That’s why he took a vial of Falchion home with him that day.” 

“What?” someone asked. Everyone meant to, so the actual identity of the voice was irrelevant. 

“Do you have it now?” Laurent asked. He sounded frantic. More frantic than a calm collected guy like Laurent was meant to sound. “If there is just one vial, I can most likely replicate-” 

Lucina shook her head. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She looked so small. She glanced at Morgan, a faraway sadness in her gaze before she said, “I’m sorry you had to find out like this.” 

“Sis?” Morgan said. 

Lucina took a deep breath and turned to the group. “When the virus broke out, it came right through our front door. And Morgan was… bit.” A soft gasp rippled through the group. Morgan’s eyes widened in horror, but they didn’t move. Lucina looked up at her sibling again. “Father used Falchion to cure you before you turned, and then he died keeping the monsters at bay while I rushed you to safety. It’s why you have amnesia. You might be the only person on the planet who survived a bite from a zombie. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to scare you.” 

While everyone else thought over what this meant, Morgan rushed to their sister and the two embraced. That day had been hard on both of them, even if Morgan didn’t remember it. Inigo had watched his mother be taken by the virus quickly. He’d held her and watched her suffer. He wasn’t entirely sure that the amnesia was a bad thing for Morgan. 

“If Chrom took a vial, whos to say someone else in the organization didn’t take one too?” Laurent asked the room. 

Though no one had a proper answer for him, even if they had there wasn’t time. Because at that moment, as if she had been summoned, a zombie stumbled into the room. 

She was preceded by a groan. Then the telling wet schlop of blood dripping from her mouth that trailed behind so many undead. A gnarled, gray hand gripped the door frame from another room near by. A heeled foot clacked into view. All eyes turned, slowly, horrified, to see the zombie. It was just one. But as her head tipped around the corner and blood matted blonde hair fell out of her face, Inigo felt his blood freeze. 

It was one thing to mindlessly kill many zombies that inhabited the bodies of strangers and viciously wanted to eat you. It was another thing entirely to look into the dead eyes of a person you once knew. To hear that ghastly moan crawl out of a throat that once produced ‘I love you’s. Of course that wasn’t Inigo’s experience with this particular zombie. But he did recognize her. And he instantly turned to Owain. 

Owain’s quiet acknowledgement of who the zombie was was the only human noise that hung in the air, amplified by the silence of his companions. He said, “Mom.” 

Owain had only had the voicemail. He knew his parents had died, but he had never seen their zombified corpses. Inigo, who had seen his father turned into a zombie, knew a little bit of what he was feeling. His heart broke again. 

Lissa’s jaw widened and her hands stretched out in front of her. She gasped, but it wasn’t a sound of recognition or surprise. It was one of thirst. She took another shambling step forward, then another. Owain’s knuckles were white where he gripped his swords. 

“Owain,” came Lucina’s sharp voice. “Do you need to do. But don’t do too much. She might have Falchion.” 

Owain didn’t look at his cousin, but he nodded to let her know that he had heard. Then his mouth opened and he let out a deep, resounding battle cry. Tears streamed down his face as he rushed toward his dead mother. No one stepped in his way. No one tried to stop him. Owain screamed as he flung one blade to the side and grasped the other in both hands. He was taller than Lissa, so aiming the sharp tip for the space right between her eyes wasn’t difficult. It was a clean cut. Lissa’s blood splattered on the floor ahead of the rest of her body. 

As soon as she was down, Owain went with her. Violent, loud sobs racked his body. Inigo rushed to him immediately, sliding across the tile floor until his arms were around Owain and he was shushing into brunette hair and rocking back and forth. Lissa lay dead on the floor next to them. Inigo turned Owain’s face into his chest and let him cry while the others searched her. 

There was no reward for Owain’s suffering. Lissa did not have Falchion. There was no hope. There was only a flock of fallen angels and world that would know hell forever. 

The light in the tunnel was snuffed out. 

*** 

Inigo awoke in his subterranean prison to, of all things, the sun. It was illuminated by the one lantern hanging from the wall. He blinked, laid out a convincing presentation for his brain about why he should wake up, and rubbed his eyes. 

“Good morning, sunshine,” he groaned at the beaming Owain. It was both meant to be adoring and sarcastic. He loved Owain, even if he was a giant doofus. 

“It is a brand new day! Come, Inigo! The world is has given us a plethora of possibilities for us to embrace!” 

“I don’t know what end of the world bunker you are holed up in, but yesterday _took_ more from me than it gave,” Inigo said bluntly. He reached for his sheet and started to pull it up. Owain put his hand over Inigo’s to stop him. 

“So you wouldn’t like joining me for a date today?” he asked gently. A forgiving and accepting smile played across his face. 

Inigo opened his eyes again. “A date?” 

He had never _ever_ been asked out on a date. He had asked so many people, but never had anyone asked _him_. His heart started to pound in his chest and he sat up. He didn’t know how to ask for clarification, there were too many impossibilities in the word ‘date’. He just stared imploringly and dumbfounded at Owain. 

“I have special permission to take you somewhere in the city,” Owain said, still smiling. “It’s a safe place, rest assured.” 

Inigo’s face burned. Owain was so bright. How was he so bright? They had officially confirmed that their world was shrouded in a ceaseless darkness and yet Owain, who experienced the worst of it all yesterday, was acting as if it was the happiest day of his life. 

Of course Inigo said, “Yeah. I’d like that,” before he allowed himself to be helped out of bed. 

In the bunker it was sometimes hard to tell what time of day it was. When Inigo got outside and it was dark, he was a little flabbergasted. He had been sleeping soundly and had assumed that Owain had woken him in the morning. But it was still very early. Too early. 

“It’s dark,” Inigo said quietly. “Are you sure we’re allowed to be out here?” 

Owain took Inigo’s hand and started to lead him down the street. “Special permission. Besides, we can’t be afraid of the dark forever. Now we must hurry, we haven’t much time!” 

The streets were that morning. In a world that ran adjacent to hope, stealthily running past hoards of zombies to get from place to place felt like part of the war. It had been action. It had been temporary. Now there was something resigned about it. This was reality now. This was their neighborhood forever. There wasn't any joy or triumph behind taking out another zombie. It was a new, morbid routine. 

They worked their way almost to the edge of town. They moved faster than Inigo had ever moved before. With just the two of them it was easier. And they seemed to be conveniently picking streets that were almost completely empty of zombies. Was Owain choosing them on purpose? Even in the dark, he knew exactly where he was going. 

They came to stop at the bottom of a nondescript brick apartment building and Owain used a pipe to drag down the fire escape. After the loud clang it made, three zombies were alerted to their position, but Owain and Inigo climbed the ladder and pulled it up behind them before they arrived. 

It was a grueling climb to the thirteenth floor. But by the time they arrived and Owain slid open an unlocked window, Inigo noticed that the sky was starting to turn blue. The prequel to a sunrise had begun. His heart started to thud as he left ‘zombie killing Inigo’ on the fire escape and took ‘boyfriend Inigo on a date’ into the building. 

Owain got out his little ring of keys that he always carried with him and opened up an apartment. He bowed at the waist and gestured for Inigo to step inside, but Inigo just raised an eyebrow. “Don’t worry, it’s safe. The nearest zombies are on the third floor and they have no way of getting up. This place is secure.” 

“Why?” Inigo asked in a flat tone. 

“Because… It's my home! It was my apartment before the virus spread. Who is a warrior who cannot protect his own home?” 

Inigo rolled his eyes and smirked, then he walked inside. His jaw fell open, and the further he moved into the small one bedroom unit, the more his astonishment rose. There were so many amazing things, it hard to decide what to focus on first. 

Perhaps the most important thing was the amount of green. Inigo felt like he had stepped into a garden rather than an apartment. There were large floor plants, potted window plants and hanging plants covering just about every once of the apartment. Some had flowers, a couple were edible, all looked full and healthy. There was hardly any other furniture, just so much green. 

The other incredibly startling thing about the apartment was that the entire outside wall was missing. Inigo took a full step back outside the apartment, alarmed by the gaping hole in the structure. Was that safe? Was the building going to collapse? 

There was no electricity in the apartment, but the light from the sun started to spill in through the missing wall. It cast a golden wave over the entire room. Leaves on plants were gilded with color and turned translucent. There was a soft, dewy feel, probably from the result of being exposed to the elements. Inigo was stunned. He didn’t know what to say. It was horrifying, but it was also beautiful. 

A warm hand slipped into his own and Inigo turned his expression to face Owain. “I don’t even know where to begin.” 

Owain didn’t supply any answers right away. He tugged on Inigo’s hand and led him through the throng of plants. They weaved through the garden until they were standing in the middle of the room. For a second, Inigo forgot about the city and its hellscape below. He was in a golden paradise as the morning light filtered around him and he breathed in sweet, natural aromas. 

“I come by every so often to keep them up, but the weather does a lot of the work itself,” Owain explained gesturing to the open wall. “The day I found you I was actually trying to stop by while we were on a mission. That’s why I got seperated from my group.” 

“Fascinating. Owain, why the hell do you have so many plants in your apartment?” 

Owain dropped Inigo’s hand so that he could throw his out to either side and toss his head back boldly. “Do you not see how I can harness the lifeforce of these plants for my own powers? I am surrounded by living energy, thus I will be the conductor of a bright new future!” 

“You… Eat the plants for power?” Inigo asked. He smirked. 

“What? No!” Owain deflated a little. “I just take care of them. The collection was started when I moved in. My parents made me keep them so that I would have a dash of responsibility and a pop of color in my otherwise ‘uncouth’ lifestyle, whatever that means. After awhile I started collecting plants of my own. Especially in the first two days after the virus. Any plant I found around the city that could be moved I brought here. They would have died without someone to take care of them and… I wanted to feel like a hero to something.” 

Inigo twisted his body and moved away from Owain as he looked all around the room. This was his future. The leaf and the flower seed packet on his dream board. Owain talked about fate all the time, but he hadn’t mentioned this when Inigo said he wanted a garden. For a first date, this was certainly a memorable one. 

Inigo stopped twirling slowly when Owain’s hands wrapped around him from behind. Owain rested his head on Inigo’s shoulder and hummed in his ear. “Thank you for coming here with me today.” 

Inigo twisted in his arms and pressed into Owain’s chest. He smiled, true and bright. “I should be the one thanking you, you dork. How come you never mentioned this before?” 

Owain grinned. “A warrior must have his secrets, or his cool and mysterious aura is nothing.” 

Inigo slipped his hands up Owain’s shoulders and linked his hands behind Owain’s head. He pressed their foreheads together and then they started to rock back and forth. Inigo hummed something simple as they moved. They danced in small circles. Specks of golden dust lifted from leaves as they brushed by plants. It felt like a purifying fresh start. 

They danced for a really long time. Occasionally Inigo stopped humming so that he could kiss Owain slowly. He savored every wave of their lips together, every roll of their tongues. When they’d had their fill, Inigo laid his head on Owain’s shoulder and snuggled in. But still their feet moved. The sun had reached a peak. Inigo’s eyes searched the hanging plants above him, still amazed at how healthy they looked. 

Then something peculiar caught his eye. 

“Owain,” he said, stopping their dance finally. He pulled away from Owain just enough to point at the plant. “What is that one?” 

“Oh, my mother gave me that,” Owain said. “It was actually the last plant she gave me. She came by the morning of the outbreak. I didn’t know what was happening yet and in hindsight I think she did. But she just gave me that plant, told me that light was made of color and my apartment still looked too dreary, and then left.” 

“Light,” Inigo whispered. There was something light in the soil of the plant. Something that reflected the brightness of the sun. Plastic? Why was there plastic in the soil? 

Inigo pulled away from Owain and reached up to tug on the plastic. Owain started to protest, started to ramble in the background about how the plants shouldn’t be fiddled with too much, but Inigo tugged. Indeed, there was plastic inside the plant. But it was stuck. Owain watched the little corner of a plastic bag come exposed and his eyes widened when Inigo gave him a look. 

Hastily they pulled the plant down and out of its wire basket. They started to filter through the packed soil carefully, cautious of the plant’s roots. Owain held the little package in the air between them. Inigo blinked several times, but it didn’t go away. Owain pinched himself with his free hand. Inigo started to cry. Was this a dream? Surely they were sharing a weird hallucination. 

“Is that what I think it is?” Inigo asked in a wobbly voice. He didn’t want to be emotional about this. He didn’t want to be disappointed if it turned out he _was_ dreaming, but he couldn’t help the hope rising in his gut. 

“It has a label,” Owain said breathlessly. “It has a name. It’s in my mother’s hand writing.” 

The light streamed in through the open wall and reflected off the little glass vial in the clear plastic bag so perfectly. It was soft around the edges. The liquid held within glinted with silver and gold. The black sharpie at the top of the sandwich bag said ‘Falchion’. 

Inigo didn’t even mind that his first date had been cut off so shortly. He and owain leapt off the floor and rushed back to the bunker. They moved faster than they ever had. Almost as if the undead understood, they stayed out of the boys’ way. In one hand Owain clutched the syringe snug securely in its bag. In the other, he held Inigo’s hand. They would have so many chances to make up this date in the future. Because they had found the cure for the zombie virus. The apocalypse was over. 

The sun filled the streets with radiant light. It was time to start a new day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frederick is Owain's dad and you know he walked into Owain's first grown up apartment, saw all of the anime posters on the walls, and said, "It could do with some landscaping."


End file.
